


Here With You

by aliitvodeson, ozhawk



Series: The Soulmates Continue [15]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men (Original Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, BDSM Scene, Blood and Gore, Bloodplay, Canon-Typical Violence, Complete, Death Threats, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Gun Violence, Hydra (Marvel), Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, Possessive Behavior, Post - X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Rough Sex, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, bdsm undertones, no discussion of kinks or boundaries, obsessive ex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-08-28 14:07:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 21
Words: 42,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8449114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliitvodeson/pseuds/aliitvodeson, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozhawk/pseuds/ozhawk
Summary: He's the monster hiding in the woods, blood on his hands and an animalistic anger that curls around his mind. He finds her, and claims her, with the words written across her legs. Scratches his claws down her back and leaves her wanting more, more more. But Daisy Johnson and Victor Creed are both still hunted by enemies from their past, and they won't easily escape them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Crackship Armada Sails Again, AKA Soulmate Shorts Part 2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4167942) by [ozhawk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozhawk/pseuds/ozhawk). 



> This is a Continuation of Ozhawk‘s [Into The Woods](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4167942/chapters/11793470) short. The first chapter is a reprinting of that short. I will be updating every Wednesday and Saturday. The tags will be updated as chapters are published; I have included all trigger warnings at the start, so as to not surprise anyone into reading something triggering.  
> A note on timeline - this story takes place post X-Men 3, and post AoS season two. But Simmons did not fall into the Monolith (because I started writing this before season three had worked out what was happening with her). This, Xavier is dead, and Daisy has gained control over her powers.  
> My thanks to Ozhawk for creating this world, and for letting me play in your sandbox. Thank you for all your hardwork editing this fic and helping me with plot. For anyone whose been dealing with me over the past year, this project, and this ship, has completely gripped me tight and wrapped me up in it’s arms. I’m excited to finally be sharing this with you all!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This first chapter is a direct reprinting of ozhawk's original soulmate short _Into The Woods_

“I’m so sorry,” Daisy said weakly, watching as May swiftly bandaged the bullet hole in Hunter’s arm.

“It wasn’t your fault,” May said automatically, but Hunter’s expression told Daisy it wasn’t true even before he spoke.

“Don’t coddle her, May. You don’t do her any favours. They were alerted when that stick cracked under her foot. We’d have been twenty feet closer if not for that.”

May said nothing, focussed on pulling the bandage tight. “There’s not been much time to train her in wilderness skills,” she said finally, as close to an excuse as Daisy had ever heard her make.

“Time to fix that,” Hunter said drily, “because next time the bullet might be a few inches higher and further to the right, and I’d rather keep my good looks, thank you.”

Feeling horribly guilty that it was her mistake that caused Hunter to be wounded, Daisy threw herself into the training he and May organised for her with enthusiasm. A week later, they told her that they’d organised a ‘graduation test’ for her.

“Okay,” she said a little warily. “Am I going to have to eat more bugs?”

Hunter grinned. “Maybe.”

“Ugh.”

“We’re going to drop you off.” May handed her a small backpack. “Make your way back to the Playground. On foot. No cheating.”

“As if I would!” Daisy gave her an indignant look.

“I know. Hand over your phone. We’ve got a tracker on you so if you get horribly lost we’ll come in and get you.”

She made a face, but handed it over, and not very long after that she was standing in a forest clearing watching the quinjet lift back off into the sky.

“Okay,” Daisy said to herself, “time to take stock.”

The backpack turned out to contain a map, a compass, a full water canteen, a small rolled sleeping bag, and a rain poncho. Unfolding the map, she sighed at the sea of green. A small X drawn in red had ‘Destination’ written on it. She looked in vain for another marking.

“Damn.”

It took her the rest of the day and climbing a mountain to figure out where she was. By the time she identified the peak on the map, the sun was dropping rapidly towards the horizon and Daisy realised she needed to find shelter. And food. It was fall, so there was a reasonably good chance of some berries, somewhere…

Dinner was a handful of berries and a few hazelnuts she cheated and quaked open. They didn’t do much to quiet her growling stomach, but she’d need to be a lot hungrier than this before she’d kill and eat a rabbit like the little grey one she’d seen bounce across her path earlier.

Clearing a patch of ground, she set rocks to build a firepit, and held two pieces of wood together, grinning to herself as she vibrated them faster and faster. Smoke curled upwards quickly and she soon had a comforting little fire blazing. Banking it carefully, she wriggled into her sleeping bag and settled in for the night.

The following morning, she set off almost as soon as she woke, only pausing to bury the remnants of her fire and stow her gear. The Playground was fifteen miles or so away over rough country; she might make it in a single day, but she’d need to move fast.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Victor Creed lifted his head, sniffing the air, startled, as a very unfamiliar scent suddenly caught his attention. His lips curled back from his sharp teeth.

It had been a very long time since a human strayed into his hunting grounds. Well, he’d see the nosy bastard off, all right. People disappeared in the woods all the time and never came out.

Except… his nostrils flared. A woman. He grinned suddenly. Well. Maybe he’d have a little fun with her first. It had been a long, long time since he’d been with a woman. Long time since I interacted with anyone. I’m a monster. Humanity doesn’t want me, and I don’t want them.

He slipped away from the small cabin he’d built with his own two hands, not making a sound despite his size. It wasn’t long before he caught sight of the woman - girl - he paused behind a tree, rather shocked. He’d expected a hunter, someone with a rifle, probably a hard-edged older woman. But this young, lovely girl wasn’t even armed as far as he could see, nor was there any scent of gunpowder reaching his nostrils. A small hunting knife rode her belt, and she was practically dressed in tough cargo pants, hiking boots and a plain cotton T-shirt, a small backpack over her back. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a clip behind her head; it wasn’t long, chin-length he guessed, a pretty shade of dark brown with lighter streaks.

She paused even as he stood watching, settled for a few moments on a fallen tree, taking out a water bottle and drinking, looking at a map and using a compass, making markings before packing her things away again and getting up.

The girl moved with an easy, economical grace, watching where she put her feet, regularly checking the compass in her hand and making slight adjustments to her direction. She paused a couple of times, foraging for food, Victor realised, as she plucked berries from bushes and ate them from her hand as she walked. He followed her silently, fascinated despite himself. What was she doing? Where was she going, a beautiful young girl alone in the woods? There were no recognised hiking trails anywhere close by.

Curious, he trailed after her, a tall, silent shadow among the trees.

It took Daisy a while to notice that the woodland creatures had fallen silent. She paused mid-stride, looking around. There was no sound but the soughing of the wind through the trees.

Predator nearby, she thought, remembering Hunter’s lessons. Bear, probably… her hand tightened around the hunting knife before she laughed quietly at herself. It’ll be no threat to me if I move on quickly. Still, she made herself release the knife, hold up her hands and send out a gentle wave of vibrations, feeling the reflections, looking for the bear…

There was something massive and alive behind a tree not too far away. But it wasn’t in the direction she planned to go, so she didn’t think she needed to worry. Walking on again quickly, she didn’t slow her pace for a good fifteen minutes.

Victor stood stunned for a few moments, until after she was out of sight. And then, jaw set, he started after her again, even more careful to make no sound, nor let his scent drift to her on the breeze. Because she had powers, which meant she was a mutant, which meant the X-Men were looking for him again.

The back of Daisy’s neck prickled. And the birds were still silent, except for the occasional alarm call. Now she came to think of it, that massive creature behind that tree really hadn’t felt quite like a bear - not that she was quite sure what a bear would feel like - spinning around suddenly, she flung out her hands again, sending out a slightly stronger wave of vibration.

There!

The next wave of vibration was designed to incapacitate whatever it was, send it flying - but it was no longer there. And then a massive hand curled around her throat from behind and lifted her off her feet.

She would have screamed, except she couldn’t get a sound out. A rough, harsh male voice growled in her ear “What’s a little girl like you doing all alone in the woods?”

Daisy’s eyes widened with shock. She had to make him let go, she had to… she grabbed onto a thick wrist with both hands and sent a sharp wave of vibration through it.

“Looking for the asshole who calls grown women little girls,” she gasped out as his grip loosened. She fully expected him to drop her, but he didn’t; his arm jerked and tightened again, something sharp nicked her throat - and then he did drop her.

She was higher in the air than she’d thought - how big is this asshole anyway? - fell to her knees as she stumbled, twisted around, her hands already coming up. And then she paused as her eyes met those of a huge guy, standing calmly there looking down at her, licking a drop of her blood off a long, brutally sharp-looking fingernail - was that a claw? She gaped up at him.

The girl - no, the woman, his woman, his soulmate - stared up at him, soft lips parted, dark brown eyes very wide. Victor licked his claw again, tasting her, her blood, her sweat. She tasted like perfection. Addictive. He had to rein himself in, the instinct to push her down, to taste all of her, warring with the realisation that he’d already frightened her. Slowly, he lowered his hand to his side and dropped to his knees, trying to make himself smaller, less threatening. She had a small hand flung up towards him, shaking slightly, and he reached out to touch her small, slim fingers very gently with his own.

“What’s your name?” he rumbled quietly.

She stared at him from wide, spooked eyes - but she didn’t look frightened, and there was no fear scent on her. Just a look of concern coming over her face.

“Daisy,” she said finally, “Daisy Johnson, please, I can help you - did you take fish oil tablets?”

“What?” he blinked at her in surprise, as she leaned forward, wrapping her little fingers around his.

“Before you changed. Was it the fish oil tablets, or something else? How long ago?” Daisy leaned closer, looking at his eyes. His pupils were slit like a cat’s, bright green, and his teeth were too sharp to be fully human.

Victor cocked his head, staring at her. “I’ve been this way for over a hundred and fifty years,” he said quietly. “I was born like this.”

“What?” it was Daisy’s turn to blink in surprise. “You weren’t exposed to Terrigen?”

“Ah,” suddenly he understood. “No. No, I’m not Inhuman. I’m X-gene.”

Daisy stared at him, at her soulmate. He was massive, he’d towered above her before dropping to his knees. She suspected he was even bigger than Mack. He had short, untidily clipped brown hair, thick stubble and a squarish, handsome face set off by those spectacular eyes.

He was very attractive to her sensibilities. She took a deep breath and realised that was a mistake when she caught his scent, a woodsy, musky scent that made heat coil through her body, moisture well between her legs. His nostrils flared and she realised he was probably scenting her arousal. His eyes hooded, lips parting, and he ran his tongue over his lower lip slowly.

“I don’t even know your name,” she managed to gulp out, her eyes still locked with his.

“Victor. Victor Creed.” He leaned closer to her, his slitted pupils flared, almost completely round. “I can taste you on the air,” he whispered. “So sweet, my Daisy…”

She shuddered at his possessive tone, swayed towards him unconsciously, and a second later his arm had snapped around her, taken her down to the ground, pinned her beneath his powerful body.

The moan that escaped Daisy was pure arousal, making Victor growl in his throat just before he took her mouth with his own, plundering, possessing. She moaned again, clutching at his shoulders, pulling him closer. Legs wrapping around his waist.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Phil!” May burst into his office, and Coulson looked up from his desk, startled. “We’ve picked Sk-Daisy up on approach, she’s been hurt…”

“What?” Phil was up and running almost at once. Daisy was two days later than May and Hunter had predicted she’d arrive back, he’d been worried sick, and it seemed that his worries might well have been justified.

“Hunter and Mack went out to meet her…”

Phil got to the main doors of the Playground just as the three came out of the trees. Daisy was pushing the two men off, insisting that she was fine, no, Mack you can not carry me.

She didn’t look fine, to Phil’s horrified eyes. Her clothes were badly ripped, barely retaining her modesty. Her hair a tangled mess, deep red bruises across her neck and chest that looked - oddly like love bites, actually.

“What the hell happened to you?” it was Bobbi who exclaimed it, having come up behind May and Coulson while they stared.

Daisy’s smile was radiant. “I met my soulmate.”

“Oh,” Hunter said in suddenly enlightened tones, “well that explains everything.”

“Where is he, then?” Bobbi asked curiously.

“We thought I should come on ahead. Make sure you guys didn’t freak out or anything when he turned up, since you know he’s with me now.” Her smile was still radiant, and Phil found himself smiling along with her.

“Well, tell him to come on in. I’m delighted to meet your soulmate, Daisy,” he told her honestly. While he was a little concerned about her physical state, he’d seen the aftermath of soulmates meeting for the first time before. And considering that their first meeting was out in the wilderness - well, it could be worse.

Daisy had turned, was making a beckoning gesture towards the trees. Despite the forewarning, May still went instinctively for her gun when a giant of a man stepped out of the treeline and came striding towards them.

“Holy shit,” Hunter and Bobbi breathed in unison.

Mack only stared, and sighed as Daisy sprinted towards the man, leaped up into his arms and started kissing him as though they’d been parted for weeks instead of only a few minutes. “I guess I’d better lay in a supply of bleach.”

May slowly eased her gun back into its holster and looked up at Mack, her lips twisting in a wry smile. “Forget the bleach, Mack. Get napalm.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now we begin my continuation - from this point on, everything is written by aliitvodeson, with ozhawk as editor and beta reader and just all around fantastic person :)

Victor’s cabin hadn’t had a mirror, though she’d known from the shocked way Coulson and the others had stared at her that she looked bad, but she hadn’t been prepared to walk into her room and catch sight of herself in the mirror. It brings her path, what had been a rushing movement from May’s glare over her lack of decent clothes, to a halt, as she stumbles, wide eyed and shocked.

There are marks over virtually every bit of her torso, teeth marks and bruises, and the long red drags from where Victor had brought his claws against her skin. No wonder Mack and Hunter thought she had been attacked, had tried to carry her to medical. Daisy looked like she needed it. She raises her hands, trails fingers over the large bruise on her collar bone, shaking fingers that follow the line of claw marks and scratches to the tattered remains of her shirt.

Light falls afresh over the room as the door opens, and Victor quietly fills the space behind her.

He grins when he catches her eyes in the mirror, and then he’s up against her, pressing his broad chest against her back, catching her wrist in his oversized hand. The heat from his arms spreads across her chest where he cradles her against his body; her knees start to go weak. “You’re scared o’ what they’re thinking,” and she’s grateful for the mirror, letting her watch his face without having to worry about bending her neck back.

She struggles to find her words with him pressing against her body like this.

“They’re the closest I have to family,” and Victor nuzzles his face in her hair, and the deep rumblings from his chest make her whole body shake with the force of them. “Coulson’s face when he saw me...” The way his expression had shifted as she’d drawn close, his eyes taking in the love bites that decorated her skin, the bruises and other remnants of the bonding. Her heart is beating fast in her chest, and it’s not from the thick press of Victor’s scent around her.

His hand tightens protectively against her, and golden eyes meet hers through the splotchy surface of the dresser mirror. “Any Pa’s scared of losing his cub.”

“I’m not hi-”

Victor’s nose wrinkles, his fangs showing through the curl of his smile. “I could smell him, long before we got close. Fathers always smell different when they fear for their children.”

One of his arms had been resting across her hips; as he speaks, he pulls it back, till it was his hand splayed across the flat of her stomach, fingers soft and claws away. Her breath comes hard in her lungs as he gave her another lingering look, burning gold in his eyes, and then spun her around. “Not yet,” Victor murmured, and he spoke low enough that she couldn’t tell if the words were directed to her, or simply spoken about her. “Best get some clothes on,” he said, louder, as she smiled up at him, his hand coming down to her back to rip the last of her shirt, fabric falling away from her skin. “Or I won’t be meeting your family today after all.”

She can feel his eyes on her as she dresses, even if when she turns around, he was studying the photos on the wall with the appearance of having been looking at them the whole time. He holds the door open for her, and wraps his arm around her waist as they go down the hallway.

It’s a steady, reassuring weight on her body, warm even through the thick sweater she’d thrown on, and she makes a mental note to ask him later if high body temperature is a by-product of his mutation. She hears the babble of voices long before they come to the common space.

“He hurt her! Look at how she came back! You can’t seriously be implyin-”

“The compatibility of soulmates is well studied, Fitz. If he enjoyed doing it, then she undoubtedly did as well.”

“I can’t believe we’re talking about Daisy’s sex life.”

“Sex with that-”

May coughs as Victor and Daisy step through the door, Daisy’s eyes glaring at Fitz, who cuts himself off from gesturing at Phil’s chest, and stalks over to the incoming pair. Victor’s arm tightens protectively around Daisy’s waist, pulling her back, shifting so he’s just a tad more in front of her than the even way they’d walked into the room together. But it’s Victor that Fitz stabs pointedly in the chest, shoving his finger right in the center of the hard muscles there, and the engineer doesn’t flinch or back down at feeling those muscles. Victor growls subtly, and Daisy can see Hunter reaching for the gun on his belt.

“You!” Everyone’s small when compared to Victor, Daisy knows, but Fitz is making the spectacle especially interesting, his thin frame toe to toe with Victor’s bulk of a body, and she knows that Fitz doesn’t carry Icers on him like Hunter and May do, which means he’s entirely unarmed; and yet he’s standing right up against Victor, eyes glaring out from under his mop of curly hair. “You hurt Daisy.”

Victor’s grip on her waist loosens, and his expression falls from the tense snarl as he chuckles. “Nothing she didn’t ask me for,” and Daisy can feel her cheeks burning up red, matched in a look by Phil’s embarrassed sputtering from behind Fitz.

“Still not okay.”

Daisy smiles, feeling the curl of admiration for Fitz’s (foolish) bravery, his chin only tilting up when Victor flashes his fangs, the sharpened teeth visible from the dark shadows of his mouth, white points between his spread lips. Daisy hears Jemma’s hiss of indrawn breath, Bobbi reaching for batons at her hips that aren’t there, May’s feet shifting back, fists at the woman’s side. And she knows that fear they’re feeling, the worry over  _ what  _ he is, the sparks that she’d felt when she’d first been dropped in front of those massive legs and looked up into his fanged smile.

Victor takes his arm away from her to hold both hands out at his side, a gesture of surrender that serves little to make him seem like less of a threat  in the tense air of the room. “Did never anything she didn’t want,” and she can feel through the bond the thrill of pleasure he feels at the memories of what they’d done, her own body echoing it, even if her response is more tempered by embarrassment of talking about those things to the others. “Would never do that. She’s mine.” And his voice curls around the word nice and low, the exact same way he’d said it in the woods and in the cabin, like the presence of an audience doesn’t matter to him at all, not in one single second of thought.

Fitz’s glare of anger doesn’t break off, not at Victor’s words, not when Jemma creeps forward and puts her hands on his shoulders, pulling him back. Daisy watches him cast little looks over his shoulder at Victor as Jemma guides him by point of force to the little table where three of the Dwarves sit, half taken apart.

Victor turns his sharp golden eyes on the rest of the SHIELD agents waiting in the room, like spectators being drawn into the sport they hadn’t been welcome to watch.

“Anyone else?”

It’s a still silence, like they’re too startled at being addressed to even breath, and then Bobbi chuckles and Phil smooths out his suit, and Daisy moves around Victor to sit down on the couch, drawing him along with her, pressed up against his side as if he needs the support, her fingers wrapped up in his hand. The fiercely protective set to his face has softened, his eyes more wary of the team around them now; she can see his pupils darting around the room, jumping from figure to figure, and she is reminded of a cat watching newcomers to the household.

She leans her head against his shoulder, letting her cheek rest against the cool leather of his coat. “So,” and her voice definitely doesn’t sound dry or nervous as she speaks, “this is the team.” After a moment to let them introduce themselves, during which none of them speak, Daisy sighs, and goes around the circle, letting Victor have brief summaries of everyone’s place within SHIELD, ending off with, “and you met Fitz. He does tech.” Victor gives a grunt, his eyes still tracking over everyone. She releases a breath she’s only been consciously holding for the last couple of seconds, trying to get through everybody’s names without drawing attention that the air in the room is too tense for her to breathe properly.

“Everybody, this is Victor Creed. My soulmate.”

“Yeah, we got that for ourselves, Shakes.”

She gestures her free hand at Hunter, shaking her head in annoyance at his flippant little smirk, even as she can’t keep one to match from coming into reality on her lips. And Hunter’s laughing as his hand slips into Bobbi’s, and Phil sits down in the armchair across from Victor, and he gives them a honest, relieved smile. Daisy’s shoulders relax, and she feels more than sees Victor’s smug little look as the Director studies them both, looking with only a modest amount of worry in his eyes, his expression so far different than how he’d looked when she’d returned to the base that she can dismiss that initial reaction. Victor’s hand rubs circles on her back, his shoulder moving up and down under her head in a way that makes her want to close her eyes and drift off right there, supported by his body and lulled into peace by his scent.

His claws are a mere reassuring scratch through her sweater.

“You’re Inhuman then,” Phil’s words have the phrasing of a question, but when Daisy looks at him, his face is set, as if he is merely double checking the facts of something that he already knows to be true.

Daisy feels Victor’s neck twist against her hair as he shakes his head.

“Like I told Daisy, I was born this way. X gene positive, I believe, is the politically correct term these days.”

Jemma’s head twists around, and the rest of her body soon follows, away from Fitz and towards Victor, and Daisy smiles to see the easy engagement from her, the way that she hears the words and follows it, like how she’ll follow the conversation if Daisy talks about how her powers feel or there’s some new publication about super-humans in a medical journal. The curiosity to know about the Inhumans and others like them, her excitement over the field catching.

Jemma’s eyes are wide, not with fear, as she questions Victor; “Can you tell me about your mutation? Oh, but your power must be related to Daisy’s then. I’m building a theory that soulmates with extra-human abilities have compatible powers, I mean, it only stands to reason given how compatible they are in everything else. I was hoping to use Jiaying’s files, but they really don’t have any records about soulmates, and the others from Afterlife are difficult to speak with.”

Victor holds up a finger, and though it has the effect of cutting off Jemma’s ramble, it’s to let the nail, sharp and dirty, lengthen out into a claw about the length of his finger joint, the point more wicked when it’s away from his finger like that, and Daisy would swear that Jemma’s eyes glaze over. One corner of Victor’s lips curl up.

Hunter wolf whistles as Victor drops his hand.

“Harder than human nails,” he says, directly to Jemma. “They’ll cut through steel given the right pressure. I heal fast too. Never gotten sick in my life.” His words are a low grumble in Daisy’s ear, his hand scratching at her hair. Letting out a pleased noise, she closes her eyes, listening to his breathing.

“Could I possibly get a blood sample? What, sir, don’t look at me like that. The implications of a healing factor to that extent, why, it would change medicine as we know it. We could completely change the health industry, and I do mean for the better.”

“Jemma....” Phil’s voice is a gentle warning, as Victor’s shoulders move in silent laughter.

“That’s been tried before. Fraid it didn’t pan out. There were... Side effects.”

Daisy doesn’t have to open her eyes to know the way that Jemma’s face will be tightening up in disappointment over that, how May will be studying Victor’s hand in her hair and judging if he’s got negative side effects himself. At least no one’s saying anything about it, just waiting in silence. She covers her mouth as she yawns.

Victor shifts beneath her, and draws his arm tight around her shoulder, pulling her up, and she moves easily with him, his arm support and guidance all at once. Aware of him talking to Phil as he helps her stand, but she can only hear the soft noises that her own mouth is making as she rubs her head against his shoulder, humming as the warm scent of his musk rises in her nostrils. He kisses the top of her head, and murmurs in her ear, “Come on, Daisy. Need to get you to sleep.”

She smiles against the leather of his coat, and doesn’t move her feet when he steps forward, and then feels her body tilt away from her as he wraps both arms around her and lifts her against his chest, her sleepy mind only cheering as she cradles against him.

“That’s it, darling. Time for bed.”


	3. Chapter 3

Victor kicks the door closed behind him as Daisy perks up, trying to stretch and making protesting noises when she finds her movements restricted by his hold around her body. His chuckle rumbles deep against her, as he slides her down onto the bed, and she looks up at his face, her brown eyes locked on his golden ones. She begins to squirm, as the stare continues, and he licks his lips, drawing his hands down her sides, pushing at the fabric of her sweater.

“Victor...”

Her voice comes breathy in the gentle quiet of the room, and his eyes darken as she rolls her hips up towards him, and he growls, pushing them down into the mattress with a single thrust of his hands. Her eyes spark, and he can smell the arousal coming from between her legs, feels his body respond in kind. “Daisy.” He purrs her name, licks his lips, dragging his tongue over the sharp tips of his fangs. His hands span her hips, and he can feel the pulse of her blood under her skin as his fingers dip beneath her sweater.

“Please,” and it’s a single word, let out like a prayer on her lips, and he surges forward to suck the breath out of her mouth, absorbing up whatever other words she mouths against him, breathing in what air she exhales. Her nails dig into his back, as her hands scramble against him, and he chuckles, pulling his head back from her lips.

“Eager little thing.”

She’s trying to get her hands under his shirt, pushing it off him, and he laughs even more, and pins her arms down between them with one broad hand. “You’re supposed to be resting. Coulson told me to let you sleep.”

“Don’t want to sleep. I want you.” She pouts up at him, her lips plump and flushed after the biting kiss, and he uses the hand that isn’t pinning her down to stroke over her cheek,feeling a thrill race up his spine at how she tilts her head into his touch, claws and all. Her eyes plead with him, wide and blown up with arousal to match what his nose is telling him. His thumb grazes over her lower lip, and with a deft flick of her tongue, she sucks it into her mouth, cheekily smiling around the thick appendage when he snorts in surprise. He can feel her tongue working around his claw, carefully avoiding pricking herself, as she suckles at him.

He groans, jerking his hips forward, his erection rubbing up against her leg, chafing against the constraints of his jeans. The warm heat of her mouth is a hard pull against his thumb, and Victor’s other fingers clench where they rest against her chin. The thick smell of her arousal blankets him, enveloping the small room and blocking out any other scent, even dampening the core scent of her that had been all he could smell on the sheets.

He pulls his hand away from Daisy’s mouth with a popping sound, and she lets out a whine that turns into a keen of pleasure as he uses his claws to cut through the front of her sweater, leaving shreds of fabric behind. She bucks up into his touch, arching off the bed from the places where his weight still pins her hips down and her shoulders push against the springs of the mattress. He lets out a far too pleased grumble at seeing the marks from their bonding revealed as the sweater falls away.

“Victor,” she repeats his name, and he can hear the desperate, begging edge to her voice, as she wiggles her hips under his. He uses both hands to cup her breasts through the sensible sports bra she has on, her nipples poking at his palms through the layered fabric. He makes to rip it as well, his hands clenching down, and she grabs at his wrists, shaking her head. “Too expensive,” she offers in response to his quizzical grumble, and he smirks, and helps her lean up off the bed to remove it properly.

She shucks her jeans while she’s at it, but Victor pounces back before she can push her panties off her hips, cupping her naked breasts in both hands and using the weight of his arms to push her down into the mattress. She wraps her arms around his neck, drags her fingernails against his shorn hair, claiming his mouth again. Victor lets her tongue explore his mouth, her delicate clever tongue bumping against his teeth, his fangs, and then he’s pushing his way into her mouth. She opens her lips for him, letting his roughness play against the chapped skin of her lips. He swallows up her hungry moans, drinks in the noises she makes as he flicks his claws against her nipples.

She squeaks when he removes his mouth from hers only to latch his lips around one of her breasts, letting his fangs nip her skin before he caresses with his tongue, listening to the unimpeded cries of pleasure from her mouth. Her hands tighten against his scalp, and he smells her coming as she shoves his face against her breasts, hard. The writhing of her body underneath him and the smell of her drenched panties sends a surge through him, growl muffled by her flesh. His hand scrambles against the elastic band of her panties, and then the offending garment is ripped clean away.

As Daisy lies panting in the aftermath of her orgasm, Victor divests himself of his jeans and underwear, sending them off to join Daisy’s clothes on the floor. He strokes himself as he kneels over her, spread out and panting on the sheets. Her eyes catch his, lock on through their haze of pleasure, and then she sits up, pushes his hand away from his cock, rubs her hands over him, stroking him as she smirks.

“Gonna fuck me?” she questions, speaking in that same soft way that she had first asked him his name, all lust and pressing need, and Victor doesn’t think about questioning the noise they’ll make before he’s on top of her, pressing against her, her hands trapped between their bodies and she gasps, her head falling back as he presses up into her.

Then it’s thrusting and pulling, snapping his hips forward until his balls rub up against Daisy’s skin, her legs folded around his hips. He holds her hands on either side of her head, braced on the cotton sheets, as their breath mingles together and Daisy’s hair tangles in between his fingers. She grins when he gives the first experimental tug on it, and then gasps as he pulls on her hair fully, yanking her up by it, arched up into his chest. She clings to him, arms locked around his shoulders, and spreads her legs as he buries himself deep inside her tight heat, her body clenching around his cock.

With her breasts bouncing against his chest, her legs slide down, no longer around his hips, but braced over his thighs. And then she slides down just a little more, and their marks connect, and it’s a burning rush through Victor’s blood. The bond snaps and folds between them, and he can’t tell who’s making more noise.

Daisy rolls her hips against him, and their marks brush up against, teasing motion of connection and separation, and he can see every bead of sweat on her throat, the glazed pleasure to her eyes. He bucks up, and traps her thighs with a jolt of the bond, and she rides down on him, on his cock and on his mark, and she’s posed before him in moving exquisite pleasure.

“God,” she breaths against his skin, and Victor chuckles.

“God’s got nothing to do with this.”

He uses her hair to tilt her head back, exposing the line of her neck, biting his way down the soft skin.

Daisy squirms a hand down into the space between their bodies, and he can feel the tips of her fingers brush up against his cock before she’s rubbing desperately at her cilt, muscles throbbing against him. He growls as she tightens, and bites the crux of her shoulder, where her neck turns delicately into her chest, and she falls over the edge, orgasming perfectly around him, a fluttering mass of muscles and wet heat.

She cries his name, softly, over and over, as he pounds into her.

His pleasure is a curling fire in his belly, fanned by how her nails are scraping against his skin, digging in as he lifts his hips off the bed, cock deep inside her, and he can feel every flutter of her muscles about him, sucking him in, drawing him into her, fanning the flames as he repeats the motion.

He lets out a howl, loud and primal, as he finishes, clutching her against his chest, their lungs panting in equal desperation for air. She’s dripping down onto his cock, the wetness of her core not lessening as he paws at her, licking softly at the bite mark he’s left on her shoulder.

Slowly, she shifts off of him, sliding down to the bed again, and Victor grumbles in displeasure, until she chuckles and draws him down to rest on top of her, her forehead against his shoulder. He can feel her wet core against his hip, his cum dripping out of her, and it’s a possessive spike in his thoughts as she lets him move her limbs, curling up against his chest, his arms wrapped over her shoulders and naked breasts, one of his legs hooked over her waist. With her head resting against his skin, his hand stroking tenderly through her hair, he can feel the pounding of her heart gentle, her breathing slow down.

Her hands rest against the hard muscles of his chest, soft against the thick hair there. When the desperate rise of her shoulders has ceased, she turns her head, smiling up at him like she has a secret. “What do you think,” and her eyes are sparkling, crinkling up as she speaks with a laugh to her words. “Think they heard that?”

Victor laughs; throws his head back so hard his skull bangs off the wall behind him, and that doesn’t stop him at all. Daisy joins him in laughing, her voice a delicate bell to his booming tones, and their lungs are shaking in unison once more for a very different reason.

He thinks of the old brick walls, the lack of reinforcement to colour the scent of them, and kisses the top of her head with a smile. “Reckon they heard plenty.”

“Good.” She closes her eyes, and though the movement of her chest has slowed to a peaceful rhythm, he can feel, through the gentle buzz of their bond, the thrum of her thoughts. There are blankets at the bottom of the bed, kicked there by some restless night before he’d set eyes on her, and Victor considers them with a critical eye. The bases runs cold, old construction that it is, and Daisy is a clearly a lover of sleeping warm, what with the three blankets he can see in that haphazard mess. Eventually, with Daisy’s sleepy mumbles against his skin, his body heat serves well enough.

He listens to Daisy’s gentle breathing until his body tugs him into sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

He’s not surprised to wake up with Daisy still sleeping in his arms. A glance at the clock on the wall confirms that he’s slept his typical four hours. Victor huffs, and wiggles himself out from behind Daisy. She grumbles displeasure, and shivers as he moves his body heat away from her, but settles when Victor brings the blankets up to cover her. His hand lingers on her hair, caresses the short bob, her lips turning into a smile as he does, and he gazes down at her. So trusting, his Daisy.

He lifts his nose, smelling through the thin door the gentle waft of passing bodies, hears the quiet murmur of Jemma’s voice. And if his soulmate was so trusting as to lead him to a potentially deadly heart attack, Jemma was so ingrained in her science to lead the world into destruction with her. Daisy seemed to look at her like an indulgent older sister, letting her do what she wanted but always watching her back with a guard she didn’t save for herself. He gives a look back at the sleeping figure on the bed, and then he leaves, moving with extra quiet steps across the limited space of the bedroom, closing the door behind him so quietly that even his sensitive ears strain to hear the creaking hinges.

Daisy sleeps through his exit.

The petite scientist isn’t too much further down the hall, but she’s so focused on the tablet in her hands that she doesn’t notice Victor watching her, and he looks at her back until she turns into the glass fronted laboratory at the end of the hall, and he only shakes his head head at her, and stalks off in the opposite direction. Little sister indeed.

He runs his hands against the wall as he moves down the space. The base echoes with a multitude of contact scents left behind through the time before he came, more than he can imagine fitting in the small layout, and he adds his own layer over the rest, throwing out pheromones and scent markers against the brick walls and metal doors.

He leaves in his wake an area that starts to smell comfortably claimed as his own territory.

Early morning sunlight peeks through the windows, dusty with age, grey with unidentifiable markings smeared into nothingness. He pauses by one of them, and smirks in appreciation to see that though the windows have every appearance of being as old as the walls they sit in, they are reinforced around the edges, metal welded tight to the brick, metal flakes in the glass the source of the strange grey covering. He looks out, and the grass between the base and the forest line grows wild, but thin. Not enough for an adult, maybe even a child, to crawl through.

Good.

The sound of rustling papers, the quiet tapping of fingers on a keyboard, thick strong smell of coffee draws him away from the window and down past more closed doorways, until there’s one open, and the room it contains so much office it doesn’t feel like it belongs in the same building as Daisy’s comfortable bedroom. Coulson is bent over the desk, stacks of papers in front of him. Victor watches, leaning on the doorframe, his feet just over the edge, tapping his claws against his leg with a rhythm to match the thrum of computer fans.

Coulson glances up, his eyes widening as they meet Victor’s, and he tucks a small black cube into his pocket before gesturing. “Creed. Come in.”

Both of them straighten into military parade approved uprightness as Victor crosses over, and the monkey suit clad man has a way of making it feel like Victor needs to wait for permission before sitting in the chair on the other side of the desk. He doesn’t wait. Coulson steeples his fingers in front of him, looking at Victor from behind the fortress that is the workspace, and the look is nothing but defense and mistrust.

“Your name comes up in a lot of interesting circles, Creed.”

Blunt, and hard, and Victor can’t help the smile that leaks over his features. Protecting his family and all, and Coulson’s still sensible enough to come at Victor through his past, through what others say of him, through what Victor guesses to be an impressive file full of smart, clipped warnings to stay away at all costs. He smiles, and waits, and after a breath with his fangs exposed past the shadow of his lips, Coulson opens his mouth again.

“Your ties to Stryker in particular concern me. You understand, of course, what Daisy’s been through. I won’t let her be put through anything like that man’s program.”

Victor bristles, his hands coming up, claws out. “Stryker’s dead.” There’s nothing to say for the thought of putting Daisy through that. He knows he can’t, not her, not his sweet Daisy, not her trusting smile, her innocent mind. Despite all she’s been through, she’s still far too innocent for that. The animal inside his mind curls up and growls.

“That’s not been confirmed.”

He raises a single eyebrow, but Coulson’s flipping pages and sipping from the frankly enormous mug of coffee, and Victor’s not sure what to make of that at all. The man smells like he’s had no sleep, and another quick sniff, yup, hasn’t been drinking enough of the coffee for it to come into his scent yet. There’s hardly any left in the mug. Odd man, Victor decides, for that much of the sour drink.

“And Magneto?”

Coulson’s hands have paused on a page, and when Victor glances down at it, he sees photos, grainy and old, of his own wild blonde hair, a flash of red and purple behind him. A security camera angle, from above, and those damn furs he was oddly fond of, and he can’t see the sign over his shoulder, but he already knows where it’s from. Toad’s there, a girl’s thin frame hanging out of his arms, the quality of the picture reducing the bastard’s slimy face to goggles and a blur of green-grey.

Victor grunts, and shakes his head.

“Cut those ties years ago.”

The look on Coulson’s face is not that of a man believing what he hears, but the edge falls from his eyes, and from the fresh scent in the air, the sort of shift that Victor has long ago, too long to remember, told someone smells like the end of a rainstorm, the shift to passivated, and he takes his nose’s opinion over his eyesight any day. Coulson might not know himself how reassuring those few simple words were, but Victor takes the effects and clutches them, his stash of knowledge that things have shifted. He listens to the metal rods of the chair creak under his weight as he moves forward, goes still as they settle back into place.

“Your mercenary work,” Coulson asks, before any sort of stillness can really fall again on the room, and it feels so much like a job interview that Victor fights the urge to laugh, wondering if the sharp smelling May is watching on the other end of the cameras he can easily see in the corners of the room, and the additional ones he can’t see but knows are there. Coulson continues, and Victor forces himself to settle back into the conversation. “That’s something we could talk about.”

A single, thick blond eyebrow goes up.

“You’re unpredictable,” and there’s that bluntness again, the edge to Coulson’s voice that seems to be more resting habit that any choice to present a hard edge. “I can’t afford your loyalty, and,” he raises his hand, swaying off Victor’s half opened mouth and protestations. “I refuse to use Daisy in that way. She’s been used like that too much in the past. I will not trade her to you, as effective as I’m sure that might be.”

Victor’s lips pull up over his fangs, and he feels the laughter like a rumbling mountain slide in his chest. He likes Coulson. Against the odds, against the protective father and pack instinct the man wears under the spy-master suit, his own private monster digs its claws into the notion of Coulson, and drags him into the cave of Victor’s own circle. Tied to Daisy, linked into the strangeness of a dysfunctional soulbond family. The flash of fangs and deep seated laughter doesn’t even make Coulson flinch; a rare thing for a man who is merely human.

When his laughter falls away, still with Coulson giving him that carefully calculated look, Victor shrugs. “I don’t need the money. Got enough saved up to keep me and my girl happy for a couple of lifetimes.”

Coulson leans forward, resting his arms on the hard desktop, the dark shadows of his eyes taking in Victor, dragging down slowly over his form and then back up to his face with the same paced out slowness. “You would work for free?”

Victor nods.

Coulson is still looking at him with the gleam in his dark eyes, Victor smiling back at him, the look he has so often given other military men in search of the same desperately wanted information. He shifts, and drags a hand of claws over his head, and says, “I’m yours as long as Daisy is. Where she goes, I go.”

“You really are in love with her, aren’t you?”

“She’s my soulmate.”

The other man shakes his head, looking about the room as if he’s expecting to find the words for emotions on top of the file cabinet, even if there is barely a pause before he does speak. “That’s not the same thing, and you know that.”

Victor tilts his head, and blinks, tumbling thoughts and instincts resisting the flood of words that Coulson seems to be attempting to prompt. “It’s enough for me,” he says at long last, thinking of the pull of Daisy when she moved away from him, the bond that sparks whenever she turns and smiles at him, the weight of her in his arms when they lay in the woods. The animal inside his mind, the instincts he’d embraced long ago, they scream at him to wrap her up in his scent and lay on top of her until she never looks to move again. She was his, and he went where she went, and that was that.

There is a stiff, long silence after his short pronouncement, and Coulson is glancing at the cameras in the corner, and Victor waits with no more movement than the rising and falling of his chest in breathing. Then Coulson gives a nod, and it’s for the watcher on the cameras, or Victor, or both of them, and a long sigh, and then he’s back to shuffling the papers with his stiffly moving hand.

It’s not until the files are back in a neat, lined up pile that Coulson breaks the vocal silence.

“I am sure the reports of your.... Abilities are accurate. We could use a man like you.”

Victor nods back. “Daisy filled me in on you folks.” Now it’s Coulson’s turn to raise an eyebrow, and Victor gives him a soft chuckle as part of his reply. “Just a little.”

“Well, we’ll have to fill you in on the details. SHIELD isn’t in the most functional of places right now.” And as if he’s proving his point, Coulson goes to take a drink from his mug of coffee, finds it empty, and frowns down at the mug as if it has personally betrayed him to Hydra.

Victor bites his lip until his shoulders stop shaking.

The glare turns to him, and with an accompanying sigh, it’s that disapproving father and annoyed manager that Daisy had talked so fondly of, and he goes instantly still in face of the harshness of the glare. Coulson stands, and Victor follows him to the hallway, a silent grave shadow.

“This was one of the first SHIELD bases constructed, to the layout’s less than ideal, but we make do. Med bay is down that hall, and the hanger. Science labs, and personal quarters past that.”

Coulson brings them to a stop at the juncture of hallways, ones that Victor knows already from his earlier exploration, but now appreciates for knowing what’s behind the closed doors. The glass fronted room that takes up the majority of the hallway space gets a quick nod, Coulson’s figure reflected in the transparent glass. “Kitchen. It’s feed yourself, so don’t expect any home cooked meals.” Victor chuckles, and Coulson gives a half hearted smile back, as if he’s not sure what to make of the laughter, and if it’s appropriate for him to join in.

As he walks into the kitchen, and as Victor starts back towards the bedrooms and Daisy, Coulson calls out, “Her favourite cereal is Lucky Charms.” Victors turns around, eyes wide in confusion, but Coulson only offers a view of his retreating back as the kitchen door closes behind him.

Daisy’s room seems a lot further away than it did when he left, but maybe he’s just moving slower, more intent of thought than in the rapid scent dropping of his first passage through the space. He can smell her scent too, curling around with the others in the hallway, the faint leftovers of all the time the team’s spent in these halls. It grows stronger as he steps up to the door, closer to the source of the sweetness, and he smiles, and there’s a warm twist in his chest that he hasn’t felt for many years.

He stands still, hardly breathing, outside the door.

Before New York, and the old press for warmth and home and another body against his. Coulson’s face when he’d flipped so carelessly through the file. The pictures, the glimpse of blond hair and swinging hips, Her scent, curling away in the memories, the flashback to Daisy’s form taken over by another reminder, another woman sleeping under a pile of blankets.

He drags his claws over his face, feels the nails dig in and the blood briefly well about his skin. HE stands stock still and his breath catches in his lungs, and he lets the wave of tingling pain rise up over his thoughts as the cuts on his face heal, pushing the old memories away. Half forgotten things that should be completely forgotten, that he thought were, and he feels them slide away again.

Victor inhales, deep and slow, and the scent of Daisy through the door has a waver on the edge, and his shoulders twitch.

With a soft, impatient growl, he pushes the door open, and walks into the space that’s heavy with the scent of Daisy and the sweet, sweet scent of her arousal.


	5. Chapter 5

She wakes up shivering, and clutches at the weight of the blankets on top of her, pulling the mass more tightly around her shoulders. She curses, not for the first time, the early SHIELD agents who built the base and who neglected to supply adequate heating for future residents. She rolls over, and then gives a long, full body wince and a groan. Her body aches in all the right places, and she falls onto her back, holding the blankets against the subtly healing bruises on her chest that possibly feel even worse than they did the day before. It’s its own kind of better.

She pushes a hand through her hair, and grins up at the ceiling.

Her body arches with the movement, pulling her shoulders into the bed, and she’s reminded of how she’d been in a similar position the night before, when Victor had pushed her down into the mattress. And the memory makes her all the more aware of the tingle between her legs, the pressure as she squeezes them together.

Daisy runs her hands over her chest, biting her lip as she glances at the clock and the door beyond it. No sign of Victor; she isn’t even sure where he’d gone, let alone when he’d be back. No clue in the empty room. Even in the short time that she’s just considering what to do, her hand has gone below the blankets and is drifting over the soft curve of her breast, almost as if she isn’t in control of her fingers, because she certainly didn’t choose to make the move.

The blankets offer a familiar weight across her body as she moves her hand lower, something akin to the weight of Victor on top of her, even if it’s far lighter than the mutant. She thinks of how he’d looked the night before, the cheap stucco ceiling behind his head, and she chokes down a groan. Her other hand goes between her legs, two fingers sliding right into the slick wet.

Her pillow isn’t in the right spot to support her head as she leans back, and she props her hips up, uses the wiggling of her body to find it, gasping when the whole motion changes by force the angle of her fingers. She thumbs at a nipple, digging her fingernails into the older marks from Victor.

There’s a heady rush when she gets close to the pleasure-pain that Victor’s claws had been, and she rolls her fingers into her tight passage at the same time the door clicks open.

She barely gets the chance to turn her head before Victor’s standing over her, his eyes blown wide, his teeth gleaming down at her, and he licks his lips, and she watches the motion, eyes entranced. Then he’s ripping the blankets off her, and running his eyes over her exposed body, and she squeals, trying to get her hands away from where they were, but she gets pinned down by Victor, his hands covering both her wrists, pinning her hands down against her breast and between her legs.

“No,” he growls, and it’s dark, the deep growl of his words in the woods, a greedy order from the man whose face is a hungry composition. “I want to watch you.”

He pulls his hands back with the lingering sting of nails on her raw skin, and she’s so still she swears she doesn’t breathe, until his eyes flicker down to where she’s two fingers deep in herself, and the look is all hunger, loving desperation, the feral twist of his expression that screams  _ want _ and  _ possession _ .

Two fingers thrusting in, and she rubs the palm of her hand over the mound that is her untrimmed hair, and groans. It’s slick and warm, and when she lifts her eyes to Victor’s face, he’s looking at her with burning gold eyes. He’s got his palm pressing against the crest of his jeans, and the motion catches her eye, making her moan, and rub her hand faster between her legs. She flicks her nails over her nipple, lets out a whine as the sharp bite of pressure on the stiff bud is both just right, and not enough, not compared to what Victor’s claws can give her.

She whines up at him, pouts when he does nothing more than smirk and keep watching, and slides a third finger, the middle one, longest one, into herself, and hits just the right spot. Victor’s eyes are a hot pressure against her skin, his nostrils wide, scenting her on the air no doubt. She moves a hand to the other nipple, bucking off the bed with a jolt of pleasure.

Victor’s mouth is a curled, dangerous smile.

“Look at you. Getting off with me watching. Dirty little thing, aren’t you.” His words are a hard jolt through her body, and she’s rubbing her fingers hard, over her clit and into her, and back over again, her knees trembling, her legs sore with the pressure of the impending pleasure. “Smell so good like that.”

And his eyes are a wicked promise, and his words a fire in her ears, and Daisy thrusts over her clit once more, and tips over past the brink of orgasm in a muffled whimper of pleasure. The orgasm is white hot, and she has to close her eyes, it’s so immediately tiring.

Victor’s weight tips the bed in towards him as he climbs on top of her, pushing her hands aside, spreading her wide, limbs out and pinned under him. He rocks his hips against her, and he’s hard against the sensitive flesh, rough jeans against soft skin, and she grins at him, moaning his name softly.

He slides down, his knees between her legs, bent over almost double, and she knows what he’s going for before he gets there. The fire’s running in her veins now, and they lick their lips at the same time, and then she loses sight of his face as he brings his head down to the lips of her pussy. He licks her through the coarse, untamed hair, long and slow, his rough tongue pushing gently at her, the combination of unrefined touch and tender care that is everything Victor does with her. He pushes her legs further apart, spread out across the whole of the small bed, and the exposure is a racing thrill over her skin. He hits her clit now, when his tongue moves, and she whines, and grips the bed sheets so tightly her knuckles are all white.

And then it’s nothing but his tongue on her, over and over, licking with the slow patience of getting every bit of her cum into his mouth. She can see his hips rubbing against the mattress, rocking up and down as the tip of his tongue jabs against her clit, a perfect dead center hit, and she sees stars as she comes all over again.

When she’s back in her body, her mind finally clearing from the bliss of pleasure, Victor has his jeans down around his knees, and is jerking off above her, little bits of glistening slick on his cheeks, and she groans and reaches for him. It’s an act of sheer willpower to get herself off the bed, the second orgasm has worn her out, but she kneels up by him, puts one hand on his shoulder and closes the other set of fingers around his cock.

She tugs and twists and he rolls his hips into her fist, a grin on his face, his head thrown back and his hair looking as wild as the gleam in his eyes. He’s heavy in her hand, and she can’t quite get her fingers around him, but he growls and bucks into her touch, hard and quick.

And then he’s coming, spilling hot and sticky against her palm.

Victor’s lips find her mouth, claim her hard, his long fingers tangled up in her hair, and they’re both panting when it’s over, hard breaths and empty lungs, and there’s nothing else in her ears but the pounding of her restless heart, unable to quiet down.

“Good,” and she doesn’t respond, doesn’t hear it as a question until he repeats it, more inflection the second time around.

“Yeah.” She doesn’t know if there’s enough sense left in her brain to be having a conversation, but Victor holds her up and she can feel the world coming back. “Really good.”

Fangs show behind his lips, and then his hands are gone from around her, and she falls down onto the bed with a heavy thud, the pillow bouncing by her head, tumbling to the floor. She squeals his name, and then his thick arms are bracketing her in, locking her body in beneath him.

“Good. Cause I haven’t made you scream yet.”

When he shifts his hips, his erection presses up against the hollow of her legs, and she gasps, her hips coming up off the bed instinctually to meet him. Still, she can’t help but wonder.... “Already? You only just-”

“Healing factor,” comes his growl of an answer, and he pushes into her, his cock slowly widening up the still sensitive walls of her passage, and her eyes go wide, nails digging into the bed. It’s all the more teasing, for Victor presses his hands down on her hip bones, keeps her from pushing back onto him. He goes so slowly, barely moving into her, that she whines, obscenely low and needy. Victor chuckles.

“You want me, baby?”

It’s not enough and all too much in the moment. She remembers Jemma mentioning, in one of her long Science! rants, that soulmates were completely sexually compatible, and it makes sense with Victor now, balanced over her, why she’d always liked getting fucked through her orgasms. He doesn’t still at the fact that she’s still over sensitive and fluttering from the initial set. He just pushes in, and then pulls out as slowly as he’d gone in.

This is methodical fucking, and she can’t recover properly, keeping her on the teasing edge of not yet prepared for another round of sex. Slow and steady, he fucks her, and when she tries to get her mouth on him, tries to provoke him to further action, he just moves his head out of her reach, chuckles at her desperate whine. “What you want, baby?”

“You, Victor, please.”

His gold eyes are hooded, his cat-like pupils roaming over her bare body, and she can’t read the expression on his face, but he looks hungry and pleased, and he pushes into her again, slow and long, the bed rocking with his weight. “You sure?”

“Yes, Victor, now, goddamn it.”

She sends a fistful of power against his chest, just to get her point across.

And he doesn’t say anything, and she’s not quite sure when the switch happens, but he goes from the lazy slow motions to fucking her deep and fast and hard in a single moment. The bed frame rattles beneath them, and Daisy screams out a wordless cry of pleasure as Victor’s thickness fills her. It’s fast and rough and merciless, and his claws chafe into the skin of her hips, and her head bangs against the headboard as Victor pushes her up into it.

There’s no tenderness to it, no kindness to how Victor fucks her. She spasms around his cock, the pressure a rapid building heat inside her. He drags his hands over her abdomen.

“Scream for me.”

The sounds of flesh slapping together rises in the room, loud and filthy.

“Scream, baby, you owe me a scream.”

She doesn’t even feel the orgasm getting close, it simply hits her hard and fast, and Victor fucks her through it, just as hard, even though she can still process enough of his expression to know that he picked up on it.

Hard, solid, repetitive, and Victor is filling her, fucking her as his name falls from her lips. It’s too much, and she’s whimpering over the noise. Daisy realizes that she’s crying, tears on her face, and it’s whimpers of, “please, please, Victor,” falling out of her throat.

He growls, and his hands are pressing hard into her hips hard enough to cut in and draw blood, and he bites on her lips as he comes, a deep heavy release inside her. His hips pull back, and then slam into her again, cum squelching and leaking out of her.

Panting, she curls her hand into his hair, and he pulls her up with him, sitting with his back to the wall. A single big hand holds her trembling legs in his lap while her head falls against his chest, breath shaky. Time passes, and she’s only aware of it in the sense of her body stopping in that present shake, her mind clawing out of that heavy set fog that is her thoughts.

Victor’s hand strokes through her hair, smoothing the wildness down. “There’s my good girl. So good to me, Daisy, so good.”

Soft kisses on her face, warm arms tight around her naked body, and the morning sun coming softly through the window; she comes back to herself in slow moments. She’s just lifting her head up from Victor’s chest when there’s a soft knock on the door.

Victor pulls one of the blankets over her, then growls, “yeah?”

It’s Bobbi, and she only sticks her hand part of the way in, enough to smile and wink at them. “Hunter says thank you for the early morning wake up call. He’s making breakfast for everyone since he was forced to get up so early.”

Victor’s eyes meet Daisy’s, and they’re both smiling.

“You up for that, baby?”

Her smile turns wicked, gleefully evil.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is slightly late guys.  
> And thank you all for the wonderful reviews and comments, you make doing this worth it :)

The warm scent of fresh bacon fills the air, growing steadily stronger as they walk towards the communal areas, Victor’s hand wrapped firmly around her fingers. The glass front of the kitchen area, the same frosted glass set up as Coulson’s office and living room, give away to reveal a crowded kitchen, Hunter in command of it all.

“No, no, go get your own, that cheese is for the omelets, Fitz.”

He uses a spatula to swat the thieving hands away, and then looks up and groans at Daisy. “No, no, who invited the brute squad. Come on. I don’t have enough food for all of you.” The British mercenary, wielding his cooking utensil with all the air of lethality he uses his guns, sends Victor to one of the industrial class fridges. “Bacon, now, Fessik.”

Daisy giggles, to the confusion of Victor, and finds herself a seat.

There’s not really enough space for them all, even with Coulson missing. Fitz and Jemma have brought along their latest science project, and have notes spread over their part of the island, May disassembling her guns perilously close to the frying pans (Daisy makes a note to inspect her eggs before consumption), and Hunter and Mack are everywhere, big and burly and constantly moving.

Three jumbo packs of bacon land on the granite island in front of her, and Victor slides into his seat. Something else gets pushed in front of her as well, and she looks up first to Victor’s smile and almost childish hopefulness, and then down, the object he’s so tenderly pushed into her hands.

She isn’t sure if she wants to laugh, or cry, or kiss him.

It’s the biggest bowl of Lucky Charms she’s seen in her life. Not just a simple breakfast bowl, but one of the mega-sized baking bowls, filled to the rim with brightly coloured sugared bits. Victor offers her a careful nudge with his foot.

“You like it?”

Her response, to lean in for a surely embarrassingly dramatic kiss, gets broken off by Mack’s indignant, “hey, who took all my Lucky Charms?” Daisy’s forehead bangs against Victor’s shoulder as she laughs, so hard it turns into a coughing fit because she can’t get enough air into her lungs.

Victor slaps her back, and then shoves the bowl across the counter to Mack.

Jemma looks up as several of the dehydrated marshmallows land on top of ehr notes, Fitz snatching them up and shoving them into his mouth while her attention is elsewhere. “I simply can not understand how you eat things like that, and stay on active duty. The processed sugar alone-”

“Speedy metabolism,” Mack and Victor cut her off in unison, and they grin at each other.

A plate of hot eggs and bacon lands in front of her, and Bobbi temporarily manages to get Hunter away from his frying pans long enough to shove some food in his mouth. Bobbi’s just as skilled with the cooking utensils as Hunter, but there’s something about the twist of her wrists as she flips the bacon around that makes the simple motions seem far more deadly.

Victor’s arm settles around Daisy’s shoulder as he picks strips of bacon off her plate.

It’s hard to follow the conversation of breakfast with the very big distraction of Victor pressing into her. Thankfully, everyone seems too tired to notice how she blushes, Victor’s hand stroking her her leg, a dangerous intrusion into her space. Bobbi winks at her, and Hunter glares at her with a very noticeable lack of true venom when she holds out her plate for more eggs. Victor’s laugh is a sweet chuckle in her ear.

May finishes cleaning her gun, and snaps everything back into place with ruthless efficiency. Victor watches her movements with hungry eyes.

“That’s not taking normal ammunition.” May’s eyes lift up, and Daisy pauses, her fork halfway to her mouth. “What’s that you’re putting in?”

May double flicks the safety, and throws the gun, butt over muzzle, cartwheeling through the air. Victor catches it without taking his arm off Daisy’s waist.

“Icer. Enough to stop a bull elephant.”

Jemma’s hand lightly smacks against May’s arm, gently amused smile decorating her lips. “It’s a dendrotoxin projectile,” she explains to Victor, as he turns the gun over in his hands, weapon nearly comically small in his fingers. “While I’m not sure about stopping an elephant,” another back handed slap on May’s arm, “it puts the average human down within five seconds.”

“Super humans?” and as his eyes lift from the gun in his hands to Jemma’s face, Daisy sees the same dark glimmer in them, as when they’d been in the woods and he’d found the thrill of her. Somehow Daisy doesn’t think it’s the conversation with Jemma that’s creating that look.

“Well I haven’t had the chance to conduct extensive testing, but field use indicates a similar response with most enhanced.”

Victor turns the gun over in his hand, and fires it into his own chest.

Daisy screams as Victor falls backwards off his stool, the weight of his body hitting the floor making the whole table shake. She drops to her knees next to him, and is only a little embarrassed over how her hands shake as they feel for a pulse. Jemma’s hand brushes hers aside, presses her fingers into the hollow of Victor’s neck.

May takes her gun back from Victor’s still fingers.

“What,” Hunter still has a mouthful of scrambled eggs between his teeth, but he stares with his mouth hanging open all the same. “The. Hell.”

May smiles, really smiles, as she tucks the gun back into her waistband. It’s the smile of knowing things that the rest of them are going to be a long time coming in understanding. “He wanted us to know it works.”

“Why?” Daisy looks up at May, her voice quivering, in time with her lips. It doesn’t sit right, seeing him out stone cold like this; even when she knows that the Icer wears off, she’s scared, and too far off balance to hide it.

“Trust.”

Victor’s voice comes in a low grumble from behind her. He’s blinking slowly, as if he’d just woken up from a really good sleep, but starting to sit up, at least until Daisy squeals and throws her arms around his neck, pushing them both down to the floor. He doesn’t push her off, or laugh at her worry, only wraps his arms firmly around her, and kisses her hair.

“Sorry for scaring ya, darling.”

“What.” Her words were broken up by the slamming of her fists against his chest, sending small waves of angry power through him, making Victor wince and twist. “The. Hell. Was the point of that?”

Victor chuckles, but there is no matching stir of humour inside Daisy, no rise of affection or reduced annoyance. His laughter stops. “If your friends here are going to let me stay around, they need to know they can keep me down.”

“So you just shoot yourself.” It’s more of a screaming retort than a question about his behaviour.

“It didn’t keep him out for very long,” Jemma says, and it’s hard to tell if the response is over comforting Daisy, or disappointment in the ability of the Icer to work on superhumans like Victor.

The only real answer has to be both.

Victor hauls himself, and Daisy, back upright, supporting her weight under his arms until she can get to her feet steady on the floor again. “Sorry, darling,” he says in her ear, quiet and low, like he’s trying to make it so that none of the others hear. “Didn’t mean to scare you like that.”

His eyes are big and round and so heartfeltly sorry that it twists something inside her when she tries to hold onto her anger.

Daisy leans her head into the crook of his shoulder, and his hand comes up to stroke through her hair, a steady rhythm over the scalp. “Don’t do that again.” She knows the quaver of her voice carries, and that this is the wrong sort of reaction to such a little thing, but her heart is still fluttering away in her chest. “Don’t even think about doing anything like that again.”

She feels his chuckle shake deep within her chest. “Of course, sweetheart. Whatever you say.”

Then Mack asks, “Is that burning?” and Hunter starts yelling about the state of his bacon and how it’s all their fault and just see if he ever cooks anything for them ever again.

Daisy’s laugh is a pure soft bell under Victor’s booming tones.

The team fits easily back around the kitchen island, and she gives a half thought to if it was like this back in the early days of SHIELD, when this had been the first base and so many new agents would have shuffled through these halls. Did they eat their meals like this; an oversized, misbegotten family?

“And just what am I supposed to do with all this ruined bacon,” shrieks Hunter, and it is a shriek, loud and annoying, as he holds up a charred strip of bacon. “I hope you’re happy, mister abomination.”

“Make bacon bits,” Fitz prompts, at the same time that Victor says, 

“I’ve eaten worse, give it here.”

Hunter tosses the bacon over the table, and Victor catches it easily in a wide mouth jaw; the rest of the burned pieces follow in the same manner, and Victor catches them all.

“That,” Hunter levels his spatula at Victor as the next round of bacon sizzles on the pan, “was officially awesome.”

Victor grins, and leans over to snap up one of the raw pieces, popping into his mouth while Hunter and Jemma give out identical shudders.

“And that was just disgusting. You’re back on the no bacon list.”

Daisy laughs and shoves her plate to Victor. “Eat my eggs, you savage, and stop giving Hunter heart attacks.”

“You sure you’re done?”

She rolls her eyes, and flicks a bit of egg at his chin. “Yes, I’m done. Now be my human garbage disposal, and eat.”

Hunter makes a whip cracking noise while May fights to hold down a smile.

“Since you’re finished so quickly, Daisy, you can start on the dishes.”

She groans, but Bobbi shoves her without mercy towards the sink, though the blonde has enough decency to scrub up with her. The conversation murmurs about behind them, Jemma and Fitz arguing about science while Mack pesters Hunter for more bacon. Bobbi gives her a little hip check as she passes dishes through the rinse water, and wiggles her eyebrows.

Daisy blushes, hard and burning red.

_ That good _ , mouthes Bobbi, casting a look over her shoulder that’s so clearly more appreciative of Victor than Daisy should be finding allowable.  _ Yeah, I can see it. _

“Bobbi,” she means only to let it be another silently mouthed word back, but it comes out in a high pitched indignant squawk, and thankfully only Victor turns his head, chuckling. He winks at her over Bobbi’s shoulder, his fangs showing over his lips.

The door to the kitchen swings open, and she lifts her eyes to see Coulson coming through, looking tired, though his hair still manages to be impeccably perfect. “Morning kids,” he groans, to Jemma’s tittering amusement.

Hunter’s already sliding more bacon onto a plate while Daisy turns back to scrubbing egg off a frying pan. “Long night, boss?”

There’s a thud that almost sounds like someone’s head hitting the table.

“You should have told me it was that bad.”

“It’s not, May.” Coulson sounds tired; there’s an edge missing from his voice, his words trailing and dragging along. “Ward’s rebuilding Hydra.”

“I should have killed that bastard when I had the chance.”

Jemma’s word fade into the background as Daisy’s stomach gives out from underneath her. Her legs buckle, she drops the plate she had been washing into the sink and feels the back wave of water splash over her. Her hands dig into the counter, white-knuckled and painful. The air in the room is a hard whooshing sound in her ears, and she can feel the counter shaking beneath her hands.

Heavy hands settle on her shoulder, then slide down over her skin to grip her wrists. She looks down to see Victor’s fingers prying her grip off the counter. He brackets her from behind completely, his body pressed against all of her back, and she hears her own whimper as he wraps his arms around her, securing himself in a warm blanket about her.

Her ear is pressed against his chest; she feels the angry bite to his grumble.

“Who’s Ward?”

Victor’s hands are sure on her back, rubbing softly, his breath blowing in her hair gently as she deals with the ever increasing shudders that pass through her body like a too deep chill, even with his immense warmth wrapped around her.

She hears Coulson’s voice faintly, as if she’s standing on the other side of the door and not a mere few feet away.

“He was.... A former SHIELD agent. Daisy and him had a thing, before he turned out to Hydra. He’s become-”

“Obsessed.” She lifts her head up from Victor’s chest to speak softly into the harsh tension that is the room. “He’s obsessed.”

Victor’s kiss is soft on her hair, and he lingers there, even as she can feel his hands curling into fists on her back.

Then he sinks away, down to his knees in front of her. His arms are wrapped tight around her waist, his claws digging into the band of her jeans, and his face is an ugly snarl looking up at her through the cloud of her pounding heart. His breath makes her shift billow away from her hips.. She knows the others are looking, can feel their eyes and worried stares on her, but she can’t bare to lift her eyes from Victor to see exactly what their expressions are.

“Gonna keep you safe, sweetheart. Gonna rip him apart for thinking he can touch you.” Daisy drags her hands over his cheeks, through his hair, tugging him close against her. “He’s never gonna touch you again, you hear me? Never gonna let him get close to you.”

“I know, I know.”

As she falls to her knees on the floor with Victor, their arms wrapped around each other, Victor is a trembling mass of muscle against her arms, a rapid vibration of rage. She presses hasty kisses to his forehead, cheeks, nose; any part of him she can lay her lips on. His claws flex against her back, and she can feel the tension in the threads of her sweater, that pull as he digs in, and even if he isn’t trying to rip the clothes apart.

A flash of memory forces it’s way up to the front of her thoughts; a video clip she’d seen once, in a high school somewhere, of a caged tiger, cramped in a much too small space, able to only flex its claws and growl at the humans who so threatened it. She looks at Victor’s face and sees that same, trapped, face.

The wordless snarls that he makes almost even sound the same.

“Hey big guy,” Victor and Daisy’s heads snap round to Hunter in the same second, and she catches the others all taking quick steps backwards, though Hunter holds to his ground. “When you do it?”

Victor doesn’t make a sound, though his eyes are like burning gold, red with bloodlust.

“I’ll hold your coat.”


	7. Chapter 7

He doesn’t knock on the door.

He twists the handle and shoulders the door open with a slam, bringing a dead halt to the conversation between Coulson and May, silence settling into the office as if it’s been blown in on the draft from the hallway.

Coulson starts to say something, a protestation of his entry methods, maybe his name, but Victor cuts him off with a harsh, chest rattling growl, before the words can form properly.

“Ward. Everything you have on him. Now.”

He feels lucky to be getting words out. His lungs are a boiling rash of anger, his chest too tight, and his claws dig into the air like there’s something to grip and tear and rend, when his fists find nothing but air. The thud in his brain is only a pounding reminder to hold on, gather intel, when the rise of his blood means instinct, attack,  _ kill _ . It’s been beating away, a flood held back by self control that is slipping, slipping, slipping. He needs to protect Daisy, and protecting her means tearing apart the limbs of the man who makes her scent turn so sour with fear.

Victor wonders if Ward can feel the death stalking him.

Coulson holds off a file; paper, Victor notes, in that part of his mind that’s still functioning on enough of a human level to be expecting some level of greater technology.

“Training.”

It’s like barking orders when is functioning half blind. He knows he needs more intel, needs to know how this man will function, needs to know what form the threat to his mate will take, and yet he is unable to think enough to compose full questions to ask.

They understand well enough though.

“SHIELD specialist,” May answers, in her cool calm that smells of warm oceans and deserts. Collected, unchanging, a deadly threat under the simple facade she presents to the merely human. “Trained to be the lone agent, with the functionality of a whole army. One of the best.”

“He called it being the whole solution.”

Victor paces, his heavy feet tracing a path from the desk to the black board, and back. The file is light in his hands, too light for anyone else to gain much of an advantage, but it’s enough. Personality, mission history, contacts. Coulson radiates fear as Victor slams the manilla folder back down onto the wood of the desk, and yet it is a controlled fear.

The animal inside him respects that in a man.

Muscles pop in his shoulder as he rolls his whole body, feeling the shift, the readiness to hunt that is a so long embraced part of him. The echo of blood on his tongue, in his memory; a call to the hunt that is more animal than man. Jimmy left this part of him behind; Victor wonders, even now, how hard it must have been to deny himself the thrill of the chase, the hot burst of blood under his claws.

May steps forward, and her hand is nowhere near her gun, and he knows she doesn’t need to have her fingers close to it take him down. The recognition of fighter, of wild fury under slim frame, the same balanced lethality as so many that he has known. Wide golden eyes snap to her, a light in the passion of bloodlust. Her feet stop moving, her scent tinged with that familiar sourness of fear.

“You can’t deal with him alone. He’s rebuilt Hydra.”

The memories are a cold ocean flood over his mind, crashing into him and making him stagger under the weight as he is hit with old pain. Jimmy, waving the men forward; the smell of blood and urine, embedded in the stone; men dying in bursts of blue light, screams cut off in sharp darkness.

He has lived too many years to remember everything. He buries things, in his mind, lets the memories pass from his thoughts like so much wind. They are put aside; another war arises, another body falls under his claws. The blood wells up, until the ocean is deeper than he is tall, and he must forget the past or drown in it.

But the memories are still there, to hit him in a cold wave of remembrance.

Hydra.

Remembrance had quenched the raging fire, but now it smolders in his chest, the embers of the forest fire regrouping before he lashes out again. His claws dig into the palms of his hand; the pain travels up his arms in sparks as he presses his nails deeper, deeper, deeper.

“We have a plan.”

It is a float thrown to a drowning man. One look at Coulson, and it’s confirmed, that the man knows what a rescue his simple sentence is. Victor snaps onto it, jerking his head to bore his eyes into Coulson’s face, fangs exposed in a snarl.

“Tell me.”

There is no paper file. The map is blue, light emitted from the box on Coulson’s desk, and Victor is surrounded by it, immersed in the false images of the continental states, circles of deep blue spread out across the massless expansion of space. Coulson presses more buttons on the box, and dots fade. Not all, but a great number of them, until the amount is numerable, concentrated on the eastern seaboard.

“The Avengers have made a significant dent in the old guard of Hydra. What we have left is new growth; Ward’s not so much regrouping as building a new organization.”

His smile pulls wide at the muscles of his cheeks.

“The young are vulnerable.”

Instincts tell humans to wait to gather strength, to build up until their enemy is weaker than they are. But the time to hunt is now, strike while the power is broken, cut them up before they grow into the strength they are bound to inherit.

May does not smile; but she smells of approval. It is a good smell.

A wave of Coulson’s hands expands the map, draws them down into an isolated dot; a tap of May’s fingers explodes the dot into brilliant coloured images, surveillance and floors pands and what looks to be a Google Maps photo. Data, recon, details he needs to know for the hunt.

“Current best estimation on Ward’s headquarters. Converted warehouse, which is usual for Hydra. Pinged our monitors for extensive deliveries when the company that owns it is going bankrupt.”

His eyes flicker over to Coulson; the implication rears up. There are other Hydra bases they don’t know about. They have no confirmation Ward is in this one. There are too many variables.

But it is a place to start, and he purrs in happiness.

Another motion of his fingers, and the box is simply a box in Coulson’s fingers, the blue light gone. The lines of his face are drawn up in sorrow. Or worry, Victor can’t place the expression and the scent is too muted around them to discern the difference. He can see the bob of Coulson’s throat as he swallows. “There are other things you should know about Ward.”

The settling contentment, the clear though of his hunt, is blown away by the quiet explosion of Coulson’s words.

“What.” His voice is a deep rumble, and he steps forward, the thud of his steps rattling the objects on Coulson’s desk. He registers the fear spiking off the agents’ bodies, and smirks, licking the motion from the air with a sweep of his tongue. The tearing sound of wood breaking, crunching as his claws drag along the formerly smooth surface of Coulson’s desk, echoes in the confined space. “Didn’t. You. Tell. Me?”

May’s hand is wrapped around the butt of her gun, her fingers steady around the trigger.

He didn’t close the door behind him when he came in; the pounding race of footsteps is easy to hear, easy to pick up. And the smell that wafts in front, faint through the walls, embedded deep in his mind, impossible to forget the beautiful tang of its sweetness. His feet still. His claws still dig into the soft wood of the desk, but do not move, brought to a careful stillness. His lungs tremble.

She skids around the corner, weak soles of her boots sliding out on the waxed floors. There is a growl building deep in his chest. He throws out an arm to hold her back, his mind screaming  _ protect, protect, protect! _

Daisy lays a gentle set of fingers on his shoulder, drawing her warmth up close to his side, her hair brushing over the skin of his arm.

“Victor. What’s wrong?”

His mate is under threat. He left her safe, in their territory. He left her safe, to wash and clean and now she is out here. The threat is not here, the threat is coming, and these liars, these smellers of fear, would hide what he needs. He bristles under her touch, jerking his hand away from Daisy as she pulls on his wrist.

He hears the click of the gun’s safety switch.

Daisy’s hand is out now too, but it is to the man and woman, to the liars, and he remembers the rolling energy in the woods, how his mate had looked after herself, and he smiles. But she is frowning at him, and she brings both hands down to stroke over his chest, and she moves until she is in front of him. A snarl from his lips, and she stills.

Her eyes are big and brown and trusting, blinking up at him as she squeezes on his shoulders. She has to stand on her toes to hold her arms up so high. “Victor. Victor. I’m here. I’m safe. It’s okay, Victor.”

“What,” he hears from behind him, in a fearful voice. Good. If they are afraid, they will not attack his Daisy. Hunter, his mind identifies. And, sniff, Bobbi, Mack. “The hell, is going on? Seriously, boss, did you tell him he has to fill out paperwork?”

“Hunter...”

Daisy’s fingers rub slowly at Victor’s shoulders, and the motion travels through his whole set of limbs, tiny little waves of her power. He breathes in, out, shuddering lungs, and then sags with the exhale. She smiles up at him.

“Hey there. You calmed down?”

Victor looks down at his claws; another shaking set of exhales, and the lethal length of his claws retreats into his nails. Fingers curl into fists, his vision is still tinged red at the edges, Daisy’s scent fills his nose. She is warm and safe and sweet.

“Shit.”

It’s a fight to lift his eyes from Daisy to Coulson and May. But her gun is back in the holster on her waist, and Coulson is fighting with his tie; the motions of his hands are too disjointed to know if he is loosening or tightening the piece of fabric. May nods at him, the click of her heels as she moves around him leaves with the pushed out scents of Bobbi and Hunter. Coulson retreats to behind his desk, and though he is not looking at Victor and Daisy, Victor knows the man is watching them still.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and does not know if the apology is for Daisy or her frightened leadership. “I...”

“You lost control. I know how that feels.”

“No.” He shakes his head at her, and her expression crashes in confusion. “I was in control. This is.... This is part of me. The animal. The monster.”

He can smell the tears in her eyes, and wipes a finger over her cheek, a careful touch with his claw avoiding her skin all together.

“Don’t cry for me, baby girl. I don’t deserve your tears.”

She still sniffles, but he forces his eyes to look at Coulson.

“I’ve got contacts who can look into the warehouse. Some might even give us a hint of when he’ll be there.” If she answers the call; he lets the detracting though remain a thought. “What else did you have to tell me?”

Coulson’s eyes hesitantly flicker to look at Daisy. She’s pressed herself against Victor’s arms, and he feels her nod. Coulson nods back, and continues on. “Possibly enhanced. Some of the reports are difficult to believe.”

Victor wants to laugh.

“I’ve killed enhanced before.” Too many to name in front of his sweet mate. “Sorry for the outburst over such a pathetic thing.”

Coulson’s smile is tight, and unforgiving.

Daisy steers him back to their room, and Victor presses his nose to her hair, laying her down on the bed as he curls around her, holding her tight in his arms. “Gonna keep you safe. Gonna rip Hydra apart.”

“Together,” she murmurs, kissing him softly. “We’ll destroy them together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And things start to pick up. Hehehehe.  
> Remember to find your author with comments and love <3


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a day late folks! My fault, completely. Hopefully won't happen again.

“-anks, Irene. Yeah, I know. Thanks anyways.”

Victor closes the phone, and walks back over to her, his expression somewhere that she can’t read, dower and set and thin lips pulled tight, his eyes glining above the bags of tiredness. But he gives her hand a squeeze as he slips in back around the table, the team shuffling to give him space. Coulson looks at him expectedly.

“Confirmed Hydra presence at the warehouse. Guns, mostly, some other assorted weapons. Looks like they’re stockpiling things for a big showdown.”

“How trustworthy is this intel?”

Tension flows between the two men, born on the glares of their eyes. Victor holds the gaze, it’s Coulson who breaks off, looking instead at the images on the table screen, his face almost... Well, Daisy almost wants to call that expression ashamed, even though it’s Coulson, even when that’s so unusual for him.

Hunter coughs, and taps his gloves on the video feed of the Hydra warehouse. “Don’t suppose your friend got details on how many bastards we’re going to be facing in there?”

“No.”

“Too bad.”

Bracing her elbows on the smooth surface of the table’s electronics, Daisy flips the schematics of the building upright to her, tracing her fingers over the white lines of the outer walls. Her lip is dry as she works it between her teeth. “I can just knock the whole place down. There’s hardly any interior structure at all.” When she lifts her eyes up for confirmation, Coulson and Victor are united in the furious shakes of their heads.

“Too risky,” mutters the former, adjusting his suit cuffs. “We need to make sure the bastards are all dead or captured.”

She sighs, and pouts at him. Victor rubs her back. There is a stillness, just for a moment, as the circle of agents look down at the collection of still limited information. But they’ve gone in with less. They’ve beaten Ward with less than this.

“Fitz, Simmons, I want you ready in the surveillance van. We may need you if things go sideways.”

“On the mission?” Fitz is pale, and he keeps glancing at Jemma with the need to confirm that what he heard was actually what Coulson said. “But we’re not...”

“You designed the Icer, kid.” Victor’s voice is almost non-emotional, but not quite devoid of all that. He has a slight softness to the rumble of his words, rolling instead of marching out of his mouth. And his eyes are soft too, looking at Fitz with only his size to give him a cruel advantage. “If Ward’s enhanced, I want the genius who can tell me how to make sure he stays down right by my side.”

Daisy can see the bob of Fitz’s throat, his fingers clenching hard on the edge of the table, knuckles white. She feels the air in the room tighten, her lungs braced for the explosion that will drive it all out. Then Fitz’s shoulders straighten, and he nods once at Coulson, more hesitantly at Victor, and she can breath freely again.

After that, the moments of planning are almost normal. It’s easy for her to slot Victor into the team, to see him as one of them before he’d even met them, but now it happens, and it’s easy, so easy. The tension between them, the lines of worry that had formed when she brought a stranger back to base, her skin covered in bruises; she can feel them fading, faint and disappearing like the blowing of a fragrance after the source has walked away. Hunter claps Victor on the shoulder as they break up, and Victor’s stumble inducing return of the gesture only makes Hunter grin.

Programming on the wide surface of the center table isn’t her favourite of workspaces, but taking the delay to transfer the existing files to her laptop isn’t much of a time delay that she wants to give up. The screen lights up under her fingertips, cameras and doors yielding to the codes. Hydra hasn’t upgraded their security there, she thinks with relish. Hah!

Bobbi brushes shoulders against her, bumping her without enough force to jar her fingers as she pounds out the hacks.

“Got a moment, rockstar?”

“Can you talk while I work?”

She hears the slide of a rolling chair behind her, and the thud of Bobbi dropping into it, and she smiles even as she wants to groan at the agony of working on a massive touch screen.

“So. Victor.”

If she didn’t have the program open in front of her right now, she would be introducing her forehead to the screen. Hard. “Is this really the time to talk about this?”

Bobbi’s grin is a whole new element in the room, wide and pleased and blocking out any space to run. “No better time than the present.” She spins around on the chair, wheels squeaking just shy of making Daisy flinch completely, a grating noise that only drives her turning away from that knowing look.

“His powers.” The direction of questions (as far as it’s a question and not an order for more information) is a jarring drop of cold water over her shoulders, splashing down as Bobbi directs her thoughts back to Victor. Victor as a superhuman, not the fears Daisy had felt grow of the agent asking after the privacy of their bedroom. She gets caught up in the rush of relief so much that she almost misses the finer details of Bobbi’s question. “What’s he told you about them?”

She can look at the screen without it being an avoidance of Bobbi’s gaze; no blush on her cheeks, no distraction from the code at her fingertips brought by the conversation. “He heals. The claws, you saw too. It’s a physical power, kinda like...” She hesitates before saying it, brief and soft, catching on the syllable. “Raina.”

Even when he’s not Inhuman, even when he’s not the monster the other woman became, the similarities are easily to point out. Physical change.

“And that freak out in Coulson’s office?”

It’s such a simple question. Bobbi asks without overriding emotion, without pain or accusation. It slides through the easy air of the conversation, and it’s a hot knife that digs deep, a sliver of a lever that wedges in and then pries her open to feel the remembered emotions. The anger that had crashed into her body. The sense of urgency to protect through blood and violence. She had shaken then; diluted by the distance of the bond, the hard pinch of Victor’s instincts had still been too much, too much, too much.

Daisy opens her mouth to respond, and then shuts it again.

Are there words for that feeling? For the crushing ocean of anger that rose out of Victor’s heart and swamped their soul bond. Her mind casts about for what to say to Bobbi, the question asks about where that situation played into the nature of Victor’s powers, and she looks into her mind, and that memory, for if it’s a part of his mutation, or a twist of his mind.

She feels small, and quiet, and so very out of her depth.

“I don’t know.”

“Good.”

Warm fingers clasp onto her shoulder, digging in until she lifts her chin and twists her head to look at Bobbi, suddenly close. “Daisy, the day you think you know everything there is to know about your man is the day you lose him.”

Her mouth is dry, her eyes blinking back tears that shouldn’t be there, don’t make any sense in being there. “I’ve just met him.”

“Yeah, rockstar. He’s your soulmate. Falling head over heels is part of the package.”

She can hear noises outside the room, the others returning and the noise of mission readiness. The computer beeps at her, her fingers flounder at the control of the hacked program. Bobbi squeezes her shoulder again, tight and strong. She manages to murmur out a, “thank you,” before Hunter sticks his noisy head in the door.

“I can feel the shame in this conversation from here. Your boyfriend’s getting itchy to ride.”

Daisy breaks into a sudden laugh, unexpected and sharp in her chest, and Bobbi joins in with a merry, rolling sound, and they throw their arms around each other’s shoulders as they move out of the room, following Hunter’s nonsensical grumblings. As they move through the halls, sturdy boots make dull echoes off the stones, three sets of feet moving in only slightly out of sync steps.

She hears Victor’s voice before they turn the corner towards the hanger.

“No, I will not tell you her name.” His voice grows louder as they approach, and it’s not just the reduced distance, she can feel the aggravated edge to his thoughts through the bond, and Bobbi turns to look at her with a pointed look. Her footsteps speed up, her body nearly at a run.

The hanger is an open space with the smells of the engine rolling through the air and the chill of the open doors hanging tight on her skin. In the middle of the space between Bus and door are Victor, May and Coulson. It’s almost enough of a repeat of the confrontation in the office that it makes Daisy flinch, even as she registers the lack of true threat building and her feet slow.

Coulson has his arms folded across his chest, and his disapproving father expression on, and he’s focussed on Victor enough that his eyes down even flicker towards her. “And what great dark secret,” she can almost hear the righteous church bells ringing, the sound track of doom that gathers behind Coulson’s words. “Does she have to hide? Give me a reason for me not knowing who your contact is.”

“You’re SHIELD.” Victor’s hand goes up, and it hardly seems enough to silence Coulson, who still splutters, even if words don’t come out. “Change the mission, change the leader. Doesn’t matter. You’re SHIELD.”

“We’re different,” but Coulson’s voice sounds weak, and Daisy can hear it, as clear as sees sees his firm expression falling breaking. “It’s not the same SHIELD.”

“Close. Enough.”

Victor steps towards Daisy as much to put an  end to the conversation as the look he gives, that final edge to his words that is so perfectly timed with the turn of his heels. He smiles at her, and bends down to press his lips to hers, hard, scraping skin with his tongue, and she still can’t ignore the haunted edge to his eyes.

“What did they want to know?” she asks him quietly as if she can pretend she can speak quietly enough to keep the others from hearing.

“Just the usual SHIELD things. My friend’s name, her contacts, all her history.”

“Things have changed....” She lets her voice trail off into nothing, a soft necessary protest born of routine repetition and her trust in her team. No force to it, just like Coulson’s.

“I know.” He kisses the top of her ear, and fiddles with the edge of her jacket, pulling her coat forward. He’s wearing his coat again, long and black leather, and the sight of it causes a thrill shooting down her spine that she forcibly clamps down on. “But I promised her I’d keep her out of this.”

“I get it.”

She starts to walk towards the waiting ramp of the bus, to follow Hunter and Bobbi up into it, but Victor tugs her back by her wrist, keeping her back in the shadows. She looks up at him in surprise, and sees that same face he’d shown Coulson. There are lines around his eyes and a furrow in his brow, and he’s got the tight tension straining at the stitches of his coat.

“I suppose there’s no point in asking you to stay behind.”

“No.”

“I just want to keep you safe, baby girl.”

“I know.” Her words are sharp, and crack in the tension of the air, force behind them, spoken with a heavy kick. “But I can take care of myself.”

Victors expression is slow to change, but as they turn once more to the Bus, his mouth spreads wide in a smile, and his fangs glint sharp in the light. He growls, and their feet move in a race for the ramp, laughing in harsh, perfect, unison.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starting to move into some violence folks, so be prepared. Victor is not a nice person (but he's never pretended to be. And he's very hot when he does it too......).

“Go, go, go.”

From across the open space that is the front of the warehouse, Daisy hears Victor’s roar, and imagines the heavy door smashing open under his fists. Her own power is a rising well under her fingers, and the double wide metal sheet of the loading dock door flies away from the hinges, metal sheering off in painful noises. It crumbles inward, and shifts disharmously as they step over it.

Hunter is a familar dark green shape behind her shoulder, Bobbi the black on her other side. The warehouse is faded grey, the loading dock now wide open, and shipping containers in a great multitude of colours beyond. Her boot hits a piece of the shattered door, and it bounces off the nearest shipping crate with a hollow ping.

The comm pops and crackles in her ear.

“Clear on front.”

“Clear on back.”

And they move in.

The warehouse is a maze of shipping containers, set up in the form of walls, back and forth in the great cavernous space. Their footsteps sound strange, echoing off the painted metal of the containers, getting lost in the high ceiling. Daisy shivers, even though the air is warm and the tactical jacket thick around her torso. She hears Mack swear softly over the comms.

Then there’s a crack, and a tearing sound, and Victor’s growl, and she stops moving, Bobbi and Hunter in similar positions of immobility. Air whistles through her teeth, despite her best attempts to not breathe. The noise on the comm channel comes too hard and fast to follow, overlapping on so many levels, and all she knows is the gunshots, the flesh hitting flesh, the screams. Above all of it, the sound of Victor’s roar rings clear.

“-in the containers. Hydra are hiding in the containers!”

She already has her hands thrown out, control ripping away from her, and the blast of energy blows through the wall of the nearest metal box, all four sides shattering. Coloured metal falls in a strange rain around them, and she sees the sluggish movement of the black clad agents staggering up to their feet. She folds her fingers, and the arch of power out from her hands refines into a directed point, a man falling down ahead of her.

Bobbi and Hunter are firing hard and fast, Icers clutched in steady hands, the blue light coming in quick little bursts.

There’s a thrill of battle in her veins, the rush of chemicals that flood out of her brain, adrenaline that surges out of her. She switches to her gun, the Icer cartridges sending a thrumm of vibrations as she fires, distorting the air and letting her feel the connections of bullet and enemy flesh without having to watch.

They are surrounded by troops with guns and heavy footsteps, and Daisy fights with her back to Bobbi and Hunter, the three of them a center point.

Her gun runs out of ammo.

Holding out her arms is more physically hard than aiming a gun, and it’s energy she has to deal with, rocking through her, not the kickback of her weapon. The waves off shaking air knock the Hydra men back, and she turns her aim to blast back the others coming up on Bobbi and Hunter’s sides. All around her, black clad troopers collapse to the floor.

Hunter presses his fingers to the neck of one of the fallen men as Bobbi kicks the guns into a pile. “Still alive. Nice job.”

She steps over a man’s leg, and accepts Hunter’s high five. His hand is firm on hers, and turns into a pat on her shoulder as she shoves past him. The pile of guns rattles, as she flips her hands about it, weapons breaking apart, metal casings shattering into a million tiny pieces. The sound of the vibrations is the tinkle whisper of a wind chime.

Hunter’s got one hand on his gun, the other on his ammo supply as they step around the next corner. Daisy can only hear muted voices through her comm, nothing clear or distinct to let her know what’s happened with the others. Finally, there’s an irritating electronic crackle, and Coulson’s voice.

“All clear. Hunter, report.”

“All clear here too, boss. Daisy took ‘em right to bits.”

Bobbi grins at her, and Daisy shoots her back a thumbs up. Her fingers flex, the waves bouncing off the locks of yet another shipping container, the door falling to the ground with a heavy, echoing thud. Empty. She stretches her hand out at another. This one falls into pieces, revealing guns and bullets, boxed up in shipping crates labeled as farm produce. Hunter snorts, kicks one, and then takes several of the guns to strap across his back.

“Just in case, sweetheart.”

He winks at both of them.

Daisy works point. It’s the best place for her to be, even if Hunter and Bobbi have more experience in the field. She holds her hands out in front of her, sending out little waves of energy that bounce back to that tingling extra sense in her head, a map growing in her thoughts of the warehouse as she “sees” it ahead of her.

The bullets are a high pitched whining noise in the air, a deeply unpleasant noise, like the whine of a computer struggling to keep up with her demands. It turns into a low pitched buzz as the bullets hit the edge of her shockwaves, and go spinning off in the dim half darkness. Hunter pulls her down, and she lifts her head to the see the catwalk above her, hanging off the wall from metal struts, and the man shooting down at them is clothed in shadow. The dull thud of Hunter’s gun going off beside her ears makes her flinch ever so slightly.

“Cover me.”

She turns her feet forward, moving sideways, around the edge of the shipping container. The man is a point of vibrating energy in her mind, and she pinches her fingers closed, concentrating the stream of vibrations on that single point.

The man stumbles, and falls, spinning through the air with his arms swinging wild.

He disappears behind the false horizon of a shipping container, thud of his body connecting with the ground ugly in her ears.

The lights in the warehouse flicker as they move forward, and she can hear Victor’s roar, a double echo as the comm in her ear picks up the noise on the naked air. He feels dark in the corner of her thoughts that is their bond, and Coulson’s orders seem more screamed out than spoken, a frantic edge to his tone as he tells Jemma to, “stand by for medical, stand by, no don’t come in, don’t come in, just get ready.

Her connection with Victor is a single thread between them, and she reaches out for any hint of pain in him, but all she feels is the wrath that is matched by what she hears, the same temper that she knows from the confrontation in Coulson’s officer. Wild, unchecked, pure anger, that’s already so familiar to her. He’s dark red in her mind, that point of crushing anger that burns so hot and freely.

Bobbi marches ahead, and Daisy has to scamper to catch up.

They come to a juncture of paths. Daisy turns her head, and in the line between light and shadow, sees the flattened, bloodied form of the man from the catwalk. She doesn’t look for long.

“Daisy. Here.”

Hunter holds the door to the darkened room open, but as she steps through, automated lights flicker to life, illuminating the machinery she can already hear in the air. Computer banks, old, with the thrumming noise of large fans struggling to drown out all other noise in her ears. More data storage hub than computer access, and it’s a sharp thrill to see them laid out in the neat row, like an offering to the complete master of this room that she is.

No sign of abortive destruction, no Hydra technicians frantically scrambling to erase their work.

An offering indeed.

“Do your thing, rockstar. Me and Bob’ll cover you.”

She throws her fingers across the keyboard, the clicks echoing softly, the familiar tap-tap of the old physical keys drawing out a smile from her. The pulse of electricity through the room is a surge that her mind could so easily get lost in; it’s a wave she can feel rising up over her ears.

The USB key from her pocket establishes the secure connection; the computer screen offers up a graphic of files flying through the air between two folders. Daisy can’t read much, there’s no time, but while the internet works its magic, she tracks down the last accessed file.

The scanned files look like they’ve been ripped off the government archives from the Kennedy days; redacted even in this Hydra version of events. Building plans, trial notes, lists of names and numbers, half of them blocked out in scratchy ink. She feels the lines between her forehead deepen, drawn together in tightness, like a smothering collection of mountains right between her brows.

Her hand hovers over the next set of files-

The transfer program beeps at her, and she looks down to see the confirmation of all files copied onto the SHIELD servers.

She really wants to sigh in disappointment. The file looked promising.

Taking the USB key back is superfluous at this point, but she tucks it back into her belt all the same.

“Got it?”

“All of it. They didn’t even try to wipe things.”

“Weird,” Hunter mutters as Bobbi waves them both back into the hallway. “Anyways, Coulson says your new boyfriend has been shredding through the baddies in black here like they’re melted butter.”

The protestation that he’s not her boyfriend catches and burns in her throat.

Coulson stands on the outside of the block of wall the computer room belongs to, May with her arms folded behind him, two twitching and whimpering Hydra agents at their feet. Blood drips from their broken faces, falling to the considerable pool of red around their knees. There’s another three corpses past them.

Daisy’s breath catches in a ball, tight in her throat, and her eyes are wide as she lifts them from the bodies bathed in blood to the figure that looms so large over them.

_ Shredding through them _ . Hunter’s words for it bounce empty around her mind, like the fading echo of a dream better than reality. Blood blings to Victor’s coat and arms, sluggishly falling to the ground, gore trailing from his claws. His face is split by a wide open grim, teeth poking out from between lips as red as the blood on his skin.

No, she realizes as she steps towards him, and his smile is turned on her. Not as red as the blood. It is blood on his lips.

Coulson’s shooting look of sympathy feels like an afterthought, too little, too late.

“Daisy.” His voice sparks a deep curl of warmth in her chest, and the darkness pulls back from the bond, fading to the grey she felt with the passive familiarity of her own heartbeat. There only if she thinks of it.  Muted temper, muted instincts; but he has to work to hold them down, to keep that portion of his being in check.

“I’d give you a hug sweetheart, but I’m a bit indecent at the moment.”

A tense moment, and then Daisy steps up into the puddle of blood and runs her fingers over the blood stretched on the leather coat, and Victor’s hand covers up to cradle her back, and she presses her whole body against the front of him. He’s hot and warm and breathes against her hair.

“Don’t.... Don’t say anything.”

It’s ignoring the others around them, and feeling the way they stare all at once, and it’s hard so hard, and the hitch in her breath comes out of nowhere, but it’s there, and she’s oh so very tired. She leans her head against his chest, and his scent enfolds her, and it’s been such a long day, and there are men lying dead all around the warehouse, and she.... She.... She’s just so very tired.


	10. Chapter 10

Victor strips in the Bus washroom, dropping his clothes into the small tub, leather coat at the bottom of them all. The white porcelain is quickly covered in red. Metallic, warm, the scent of it rises up with the stream of the hot water, mingling with the air, and he can practically feel the swirls that the flow of it takes on. He swings the handle around to cold.

He pulls on a borrowed pair of Mack’s sweatpants, too tight around the waist, good enough only to cover him for proper company. He watches the water rise in the tub until his clothes have started to float in the murky red water, then leaves.

There’s a coolness in the air, a chilly breeze that has nothing to do with the blasting AC. Victor feels the prickle on his skin as he lifts his head, snifting until he catches a proper whiff of Daisy, not her contact scents that litter over every surface of the Bus. The sweet line of air leads him to the top of the stairs, his soulmate’s head leaning against the center pole.

She doesn’t lift her head to look at him, even though he knows that his footsteps are loud echoes on the hollow floor.

Daisy’s shoulders shake so small and tightly he doesn’t notice until he’s kneeling down behind her.

“I’m fine.” There’s a hiccup to her words. “Just.... Tired.”

He nuzzles into the back tuft of her hair, and the sound of her giggle rolls through his bones like a warm pleasant wavve, a jolt of pleasure at being the one to draw out such a relaxed noise from her when she’s in such a state. She leans back, her head on the top of his knees, and he can just barely see her eyes if he tilts his chin forward enough.

“Heard you saved Bobbi and Hunter.”

He pulls his claws gently through her soft strands of hair, scratching lightly at her scalp when she sighs and turns her head in more towards his touch. He watches her eyes flutter closed, the soft lines of her eyelashes oddly endearing. The bond sparks in cascading blues between their minds, where Daisy leans back against his legs, a step lower than him so their bodies are lined up back to knees.

“First time I’ve deflected that many bullets.”

“You overdid yourself.”

It’s a grumble, a complaint more than a comment on her physical state. His nose pressed up against the indented curve of the nape of her neck, he puts the name to that flat note in her scent. Not fear or shame, as he might have so feared, but pure, human exhaustion.

“I needed to.” She turns, just enough to lift her eyes to meet his gaze without cracking something. It’s an awkward position to talk in. “I’m a part of this team.”

Her lips hand open, other protestations hanging in the unvocalized air, and he bends his back around to kiss her, their faces ill matched to the angle, just only meeting up for the kiss that’s soft and quick.

Victor thumbs rub over the skin of her neck in gentle slow circles.

“I know. Doesn’t stop me worrying over you.”

Soft fingers pull his hands down from her neck to wrap around her shoulders, folded across her chest with her arms completing the x shape as her fingers entwine with his. Daisy squeezes them as he shifts and resettles, getting further down on the tiled floor.

“I was worried about you.”

Her voice is almost a exhale from her lungs. It’s so quiet in the space, like she couldn’t bring herself to give the words a full set of life as she speaks. He hears it though, sharp ears picking up the gentle crest of words as he rests his chin on the top of her head.

“I can deal with Hydra. I heal.”

“I could feel you.” He imagines she’s staring at the dark grey of the exposed floor straight ahead of her, the little bit of the room below that’s exposed by the curve of the staircase. He has no other indication of where she really is looking. “Your anger. You hate them.”

Hate. The snort bubbles to the top of his throat. He forces himself to let it die there. His thoughts are a jumble, a mess of the mirade of emotions and instincts, the two sides of his being he has so long spent trying to separate and now refuse to be divided again. The blurring grey of his humanity, and his monster. The war within he thought settled; the war his slip of a soulmate had sparked up again.

Hate is not the word for the bubble of blackness that coils within his chest and squirms whenever he thinks of Hydra and Grant Ward. Hate is too human for him.

He blows a breath across her hair, shifting it as his lungs make one long exhale.

“I’ve fought Hydra before. They’ll die, just like then.”

“But you do hate them.”

There is no question in Daisy’s sweet voice, but his heart twists as if she has asked something far more personal than this singular moment of assumption. She will perhaps never understand that coil of instincts, even as much as she feels them spring boarding over to her through their bond.

But he’s a monster, and no monster feels hate.

How long had he thought of himself in that fatalistic way? For far longer than he’d borne her words on his skin, he had seen what his mutation condemned him to be. Her arrival in his life brought questions to that reality, shakes him from the rock of the centuries old thought. But Victor grasps out from the black basin of his feral instincts, curls his claws into the flesh of the thoughts, and pulls them back the foremost of his being.

Grant Ward deserves the monster Victor can give him.

“Victor.”

Daisy pulls out the word, making it long and slow and careful. It’s a whole breath from her lungs. He can taste the concern on the air, feel the shifting, worried beat of her heart. She still doesn’t look at him. She looks out in front of her instead, and he has the unshakeable feeling that she isn’t seeing any of it at all.

“What aren’t you telling me? What do you know?”

He curls his claws in, and the sharp bones scrape her skin. A single spot of blood crops up.

“Victor.”

A hard edge creeps into her voice, and in the bond, there’s a razor’s sharp bite.

He sighs.

“Coulson told me about Ward.”

The chest under his arms goes completely still. Daisy isn’t breathing.

“What he did to you.”

She smells of pain. There’s no blood on her skin, no break of her bones, and she smells of pain and fear.

“How he betrayed the team.”

A body that had been still and in pain turns sharply, twisting around under his arms, elbows knocking against his knees and a face set in sudden confusion looking up at him. Victor stares back down at Daisy, and feels confusion creeping up on him.

“He- Is that what Coulson told you?”

“Ward was a member of your team. He’s Hydra.” Victor’s brows pull together, and he leans back, trying to fit more of Daisy’s body into his sight, trying to see what is making her look in that particular set of confusion and hurt.

“Daisy; what else is there?”

There’s something more, something deeper, and he feels it even as she tries to cover up her expression and hide the hurt from their bond. She fails. He feels it, and feels how much it scares her. She may be able to hide that from her face, conceal it under all the other emotional scents that swim around her body, but the bond carries what Victor’s animal senses can’t, and his heart twists with pain in response.

Daisy looks down and away.

He squeezes her fingers, and presses his chin against the side of her head.

“Ward..... Ward thinks I’m his soulmate.”

Victor feels nothing.

His chest is still, and fine, and doesn’t hurt. His breathing is even, his mind clear. The residual anger from the warehouse is gone, gone, and the pounding of his heart is nothing. There is no heat on his skin, no ice cutting through his veins.

He feels nothing, and he is at peace.

He knows what he will do.

He knows what the end of the human in him will be. He knows what the monster will do to end the war, and it’s all for his Daisy. For Daisy, Daisy, Daisy, Daisy, Daisy. He sees it all laid out so perfectly before him. The human drawn out by Daisy, so the monster within his mind could learn all he needs before slaying the one monster chasing her.

The beast has a mate, and no one, no Hydra or monster or human will take her away from it.

“Victor?”

There’s a little hitch to her voice that almost tastes like fear.

“Are- Are you alright?”

The wall of calm cracks. Crumbles. Splits. Falls into dust.

“Don’t be afraid.” It’s half the beast and half the man that speaks, and even he doesn’t know where one ends and the other begins. “I’m only going to hurt anyone who gets in my way.”

And she goes silent.

It’s like a building rush, the sweeping pounding of the waves over his body, and he feels it coming, and it’s the ocean, he can do nothing to stop it. It hits him, and hits him again, and again, and again, and all he can feel the is waves beating him back. Anger, sending him stumbling back. He can’t stop it. He sinks down into it. He’s swallowed by the waves.

Daisy is still looking up at him in fear.

He takes her chin in his hand, rests his fingers against her cheek, leans in and kisses the line where her hair meets her forehead.

“I’ll kill him. It’s what the monster does, in fairy tales, isn’t it?”

Daisy sits in silence, and the only noise between them is the in and out of their breaths through their lips a silence that curls around them without words to describe it. Victor bus his thumb slowly against her hand, feeling the small ridge of a scar marring the softness, and Daisy’s chest rises and falls in a steady, shallow rhythm between his knees, and the arms folded around her.

“You’re not a monster,” she says finally, and it feels like there should be doubt where there is none, like he should hear a quiver in those words. Her voice is steady. Even he can’t hear any doubt.

“I’ve killed more than you can count.” He’s lost count. There are too many to remember. He will do it again, a thousand times over.

“That doesn’t make you a monster.”

Victor’s lungs stutter, catch, on the breath of air he was trying to suck in, and it feels like drowning. The bond between their minds swells with warmth to match the hot press of Daisy’s hands squeezing his. He wants to kiss her, and hug her, and ravage her, here, now without abandon. He doesn’t give a damn about where they are, about who could come up the stairs or wander by from the rest of the bus.

His hands curl around her shoulders, and he pulls her with him to lay, back she twists around in his hold until they are chest to chest, legs hanging over the stairs, his back against the cold floor.

Her lips are on his.

A heat burns down his side, and her hands chase it, rubbing against his skin, and he cups the firm flesh of her butt, molding the flesh between his fingers. She moans, and kisses him harder, pushing her tongue against his.

A cough, from the side, and regular tapping of an annoyed foot.

Victor’s eyes lift with pained reluctance up to Mack, glaring down at them, and Daisy hides her face in the space between his side and arm.

“Not. On. The. Floor.”

The snarl from Victor’s lips is harsh; Mack doesn’t blink.

“This is a public space. You have a bunk for a reason, Daisy.”

“Sorry, Mack.”

The big man’s expression softens, only just a smidge. “Next time, I throw bleach on both of you.”

“Yes, Mack.”

Daisy slides off Victor, pulling away from the pressure of his attempt to hold her against his chest. He groans, and sits up, bracing his hands back on the floor to be sitting and looking across at Daisy as she dusts off her jeans, a sheepish rose coloured blush on her cheeks. Even in the shadows of the stairs, looking up from the spiral hole in the floor, dwarfed by the pair of them, she manages to hold herself tall.

The Bus shudders underneath Victor, the rough bounce of airplane wheels settling on solid ground. Daisy wobbles, ignoring Victor’s outstretched arm for the much thinner, but closer, railing.

Mack shoulders around them, moving down the tight spiral of the staircase while Daisy and Victor still hover at the top, both stepping towards the other in a manner that leaves them crowded too close on the steps, both unwilling to pull away to better stand somewhere else. 

Outside the windows, the shadows of the landing bay close in around them.

“Oh,” Mack tosses back over his shoulder with a gentle smirk. “And put a shirt on, Victor.”

Daisy’s forehead bounces on Victor’s chest as she laughs, shoulders bouncing with the rough rise and fall of her laughter.

Victor trails a single finger under her chin as she starts to pull away, and drags her face up towards his, until she’s on her tiptoes and he’s brought her up to his mouth, and his kiss turns into a bite, pushing against the red skin of her plump lips with the sharp sting of his fangs, drawing out the slow groan from her chest with the blood.

“Victor....”

“Later,” he promises, his pupils blown wide and his eyes dark gold, his words spoken with the drip of pleasure and the promise of future satisfaction. He shifts, and she steps back, is almost nervous how she can’t quite make it a normal step away from him, and towards the washroom where he’d left his clothes. “I’ll get a shirt. You go ahead.”

“Hurry up, mister. If we move fast enough we can skip debrief.”

Victor doesn’t take very long at all to gather up his dripping clothes from the washroom and shove them in a bag. The only other shirt he has is too small, tight around the lines of his chest, but it goes on all the same, and that’s enough for him to count Mack’s orders as followed.

He thinks he’ll come down the stairs to an empty hanger. Quick as he’s moved, there’s time enough for the rest of the team to have cleared out, gone off to Coulson’s meeting.

If he’d bet against himself, he would have lost.

The smell of people is right there as he moves off the stairs, close, as physically defined as if he could see them. And then he does, just by the first black truck, standing together, science team behind May and Hunter, both with their guns drawn. Daisy turns her head back over her shoulder at him as he comes down the ramp. Victor’s steps are slow, careful. He smells.....

Victor lifts his eyes from the group, following the aim of May’s gun, and he doesn’t have to look to know what he’ll find but he looks anyways, and it’s by the only roadway access to the hanger that his eyes find their rest.

The car has the edge of once being a brilliant blue, but has since turned to the universal shade of faded grey.

He drops the bag of wet clothes.

Victor exhales, and the motion of it goes through his whole body. He starts forward, echo of his steps shifting from metal ramp to concrete hangar floor. Coulson throws his arm in front of Victor, May’s voice a biting ring in his ears. “Who is that?” All he does is shove back Coulson’s arm like it isn’t even there, past the startled air of the SHIELD agents, past even Daisy without looking at her face.

Nervousness tastes like hot peppers in the air.

“Creed-”

“Relax.”

“You know these women?”

Victor feels the curl of Coulson’s anger, that deep sour scent that rolls off the man like the words roll off his tongue. It follows Victor, as he steps out, the cloud of scent that mingles in the air following him, scents that he can’t ignore, can’t do anything to pretend that he doesn’t know what the resentment in them means.

“Yeah. You could say that.”

There’s not all that much space in the hanger to cross, even less to leave in space between them, and he hears the shuffling behind him that is agents grabbing a better line of fire. One of the women approaching from the strange car, plain white dress and short black hair, shifts in a similar manner.

But Victor’s eyes are on her companion, who carries her white cane in both hands and turns her face up towards him with unnerving accuracy. She has an unaging grace to her slow movements, a wisdom hidden in a deceptively young face.

“Victor,” Irene says, and sighs. “What have you done?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's entering exam hell?  
> This author!  
> *screams for days!*  
> Don't worry, I promise, the posting schedule isn't going to change, still going to be wedsdays and saturdays. But you might be dealing with some more days like today, where it goes up super late in the days, rather than earlier. I just tend to remember once I've finished all my studying, which is late.


	11. Chapter 11

“Explain, Creed, now.”

Coulson has refused to release his hold on his gun. Despite Victor’s assurance that their visitors are not here to hurt them, and Daisy’s confirmation, repeatedly, that he isn’t lying, the Director keeps his fingers tightly clenched around the butt of his pistol. They stand in a lopsided circle in the middle of the hanger, Mack having ushered Jemma and Fitz away, and locked the door behind them. Victor stands more on the side of the unexpected newcomer’s than Daisy’s SHIELD.

His teeth grind together as he clenches his fists and stares down at Coulson.

“They’re old friends. Irene helped me find that Hydra base.”

“Raven did most of the legwork.” Irene’s smile, and thin frame, gives her the air of  _ unassuming  _ personified. She taps the ball of her cane against the floor repeatedly. “And we did not come all this way for social talk.”

Daisy’s eyebrows are a conversation all their own.

“Raven, Irene,” says Victor with a bow of deference to each of them. He can’t quite meet Daisy’s eyes, not even now. He didn’t invite them, he tries to tell her across the silence of their bond But there’s nothing in her expression, nothing in the feel of her thoughts, to indicate acknowledgement; let alone acceptance and forgiveness. “Old friends.”

Irene marches forward, her feet in perfect rhythmic step, and though she ends up not quite in front of Coulson, there’s the dramatic flair of her unwavering movements, her steady path. “Old friends who don’t have time for this.”

Raven’s snort is muffled by a hand across her mouth.

“You’ve thrown water on the hornets’ nest, Director. Will you accept help with the swarm, or not?”

He almost wishes Irene had gotten her sight back, just so she can see the expression on Coulson’s face for herself.

“What do you know about Hydra?” While Coulson seems inclined to only sputter and turn bright red, May has spitting anger in her voice, and what Victor is inclined to think of as a glare meant to kill any sort of mortal.

“Hydra works with powers they can not control, and meddttle in things that are not their business. No mutant is a friend of theirs.”

“You’re a mutant?”

Daisy steps forwards, and for a moment, she’s between Irene and three cocked guns, and Victor feels his world spin. She moves heedless, reckless, ignoring the lines of fire she has crossed to be closer to Irene. His feet take unprompted steps forward.

Irene’s head tilts almost all the way to ninety degrees, her black glasses sliding down her nose. “Yes. As is my dear Raven.”

Raven’s grumble of, “not anymore,” is so low Victor suspects he is the only one to hear it.

“Then why come to us? SHIELD doesn’t have a great record with metahumans.”

“Because, Daisy Johnson, you have changed the rules of the game. Your enemy makes powerful alliances. The battle lines are being drawn around you, and you would remain blind. What will come will change many, and I can not see past it.”

“Sounds rather.... Dramatic.”

“When is war not?”

Hunter is the first to holster his gun as he steps forward, a grin on his face in place of an answer to Irene’s question, and then Bobbi follows him, guns tucked back alongside her batons on her waist. Irene shakes their hands in turn. Daisy nods, but moves towards Victor instead, and he drapes his arm over her shoulders, smirking as Coulson glares at him.

“Raven, darling, do come and say hello.”

He knows her as a woman who moves with lethal grace, and there is no change in her now, as she steps around him. Black leather jacket, and her black hair is swept back around her head, pressed tight to the scalp with heavy smelling gel. She has the same settled stance as May, settling with her legs spread behind the still smiling Irene.

“Hello.”

“Can we move inside, Director? There’s plenty to talk about, and I’m sure your little scientists are getting quite worried.”

Eyes tight, narrowed as they shift between the three mutants, Coulson seems to be holding a debate with himself inside the silence of his own mind. The minutes drag out, stretched out in the feeling and tension, bringing it to a great age instead of the minute or so that it is.

“Alright. Seems I’ve got no choice.”

They shuffle forward at first, none of them taking the initiative of have the distrustful others at their back. Then Daisy steps out, marching with a solid beat to the door, punching in the keycode while Victor leads the group in hurrying to catch up with her.

“Lounge,” Daisy says, and it’s an order as much as anything to come out of Coulson’s mouth. Irene’s soft laugh echoes delicately between the brick walls, rolling with them as they move towards the lounge area.

“How did you find us? Suppose you’re going to deny Victor telling you about the place.”

“Did not,” grumbles the feral mutant as Daisy shoves him back into the couch.

One hand on each of Irene’s shoulders, Raven guides her down to an armchair, each of them moving with their own sort of grace. Victor watches how Irene tries to nudge Raven towards a chair of her own, even as Raven is sitting down on the broad armrest of the chair, deceptively settled, legs crossed and hands folded in her lap as if she wasn’t able to jump right into a fight.

Irene pushes Raven’s foot away from her own legs, using her cane as a weapon.

“He didn’t. When I offered to come help, he turned me down.” He can’t see Irene’s eyes from behind the darkness of her glasses, but he feels a tingle along his side, as if she is glaring at him all the same. “We came anyways.”

“You said you’re a mutant.”

“You as impatient as your name, Quake. Don’t worry. You will eventually meet more of your own kind untainted by your mother’s legacy.”

Daisy’s rapid blink in the after moment of that seems almost loud enough to echo in the confined space of the room. Victor chuckles, and only shakes his head when Daisy turns her confused onto him. He can’t manage anything.

There is no door to swing open and announce more arrivals, but Irene exhibits the same uncanny awareness that matches Victor’s swing around; looking up as Fitz and Mack come around the corner and blink in almost comical confusion. Irene’s hand clutches at Raven’s knee. She barely opens her lips to speak, that seems like it would take more energy than she has available.

“Oh my sweet boy. You’re going to make someone I love very happy.”

Fitz’s face is bright red as he turns to look at Coulson, and Victor doesn’t need any enhanced senses to read the question that quivers through the young man’s body. It’s puzzlement, and worry, and abashment over what might be the meaning of those nonsensical words of greeting from a complete stranger.

Raven slowly pries Irene’s fingers away from the fabric of her dress, and Irene clutches at her wrist instead, nails digging in with a grip that leaves white half moons in Raven’s skin. Coulson coughs, May shifts from foot to foot. Daisy looks from Raven to Irene, and back, her head twisting each way to focus on the woman in question.

He sees the moment the light in her mind bursts bright.

“You’re Raven Darkholme! You’re Mystique!” She’s on her feet, her arm waving wildly as she gestates her revelation, fingers pointed in defense or attack, even Victor can’t say. “Oh my god, oh my god!”

Jemma’s hands are covering her mouth, Hunter and Bobbi are both reaching for their guns, and May looks thrown, as if there were a thousand other answers to this puzzle of a day that would make more sense than the one she is given. Victor stretches out to take Daisy’s hand, pull her back to the couch with him, but she jerks firmly out of his reach. Then she twists around to glare at him as well.

“You.... You said old friends.” He can’t look at her. He watches his clenched hands rip holes into his jeans, stares at the claws that scratch at flesh rather than see the heartbreak he can hear in her voice. Their bond, that link between their minds that seems so much a part of him already, feels too thin and stretched out to take anything of measure from it.  “You were a part of the Brotherhood, weren’t you? That’s how you know her.”

She phrases it like a question. He’d like to pretend that it is.

“Yes.”

He can only give her the simplest of words. Anything more than that refuses to come out of his mouth. He chokes up on the words that he wants to say, the reassurances that he needs to give her. A thousand explanations, a million excuses bottle up in his chest, get stuck in his throat, and it’s impossible to get a single one out through his lips. His chin is pressed against his chest as he refuses to meet the pressure to look at his mate.

“Why?”

“Victor left.”

Raven’s voice is a sudden snap of harshness in the air, a bite that comes up from the depths of her chest and cuts through his ear. She voices anger that Victor can not, and he carefully brings his head up to glance at her, eyes averted from Daisy’s cold presence at his side. Raven’s high cheekbones and distinctive black eyes grant her a cruel beauty, and her anger only increases it.

“What?”

“He left,” Raven repeats, and time has not softened her tongue or blunt speech. “Victor left the Brotherhood, after Liberty Island. Was never much of a real member anyways.” For a brief moment, a heart beat or two, her gaze shifts to him, and the anger on her features softens.

“Didn’t know you cared.”

“Careful Victor, or I’ll think you’ve gone soft.”

“Eh, can’t help it.”

“Did you know? DC, did you know?”

The sweetness, (even now she smells so perfectly sweet), shifts sour and bad, and he can’t not look at her any longer, he has no choice, he can’t bare to smell her anger and not look to see how the hurt is twisting her features. Victor raises his eyes up, over the room until they find Daisy, and she’s not look at him but at Coulson. He can easily follow the quiver of her chin, and it’s as if his gaze pulls her back towards him, hints of moisture on her cheeks. It’s torture more painful than anything Stryker ever did to him.

Somehow, he finds his voice.

“I told you what I was. What I am. I never lied to you, Daisy.” He wants to choke on the words. Her face has tears and sadness mingled together in the horrifying nature of what he has brought to her feet. He’s the ultimate source of the pain that echoes through their bond, and the smell of her in the room, and on her beautiful face. Him.

No one else.

“I told you what sort of monster I was.”

“Should we leave them alone?”

“Not now, Fitz.”

“Just feels like watching my parents have sex.”

May coughs, and Raven with her, and the two women smile in delicate unison. Daisy hesitates, hovering with her feet on the cusp of moving forward, and then she is. She swings her arms around his shoulders and pulls until he has no choice but to lift her up and keep the strain off her back. She speaks in a breath of words, right into his ears.

“I just wish you had told me.”

Victor buries his nose in her hair and breaths deep, and it feels like the world tilts back into the correct orbit.

“Sorry.”

Irene taps her cane against the floor impatiently.

“As nice as it is to see you with your soulmate after all these years, things can’t wait.” All the eyes in the room turn to her, and she’s a commanding general, claiming the attention of her troops and strangers alike. “We’ve run out of time, Victor.”

He feels his breath rattle in his lungs.

“It’s what I worried would happen. He’s gone to  **_them_ ** .”


	12. Chapter 12

 

“You’re leaving your side exposed.”

Daisy turns at the sound of Raven’s voice, dropping her hands from the punching bag. In the small gym, the women don’t have much chance for space between them, and Daisy is sure that if she can see the wrinkles under Raven’s eyes, then the older woman can see the embarrassing amount of sweat on her forehead.

“May I?”

After a slow nod, Daisy steps back from the bag, and Raven takes her spot. She’s changed, into a tight fitting tank top, and it’s hard not to get distracted by the ripple of muscles as she squares off with the punching bag.

“You keep raising your elbows.”

The bag swings as Raven punches into it, and Daisy eyes the motion in fascination. It hardly gives when she does that; the weight is the point, and yet when Raven’s fist connects, it swings on the chain, rattling noises in the air.  _ Fuck, how strong is she _ , Daisy wonders, then shakes her head to get it back on track.

“You throw your punch, and don’t pull back properly.” Raven throws another punch, and yup, and if Daisy was leaving your elbow out like that, May would slap her round the head. “Practice close to the bag. Envision your elbow attached to your ribs with a ruler. You can only swing it in a straight line.”

She motions for Daisy to go again, and when she tries to throw a fist out, Raven’s hands clamp around her elbows and push them into her sides, restricting her, and it’s harder to make the punch, but it feels better too.

“Like that.”

Raven’s right up close behind her, and there’s not a lot of room with her hands holding Daisy’s arms like that, and somehow it doesn’t twig any desire to throw Raven over her hips or grab back. Like Raven knows exactly what to avoid when she stands like that.

“Good.”

Her fists hitting the bag is a dull, repeated thud that’s satisfyingly firm in the gym. Eventually, Raven steps back, but it still feels like Daisy can hear that soft voice of approval at her back. The other woman slowly circles her, walking around the bag with an expression on her features that Daisy can’t read, too caught up in the pressing burn in her arm muscles.

The gym door swings open with a creak of rusted hinges, and Daisy doesn’t lift her head to check, but the march of shoes on the tiles sounds so much like May that she doesn’t have to look to know her SO’s approach.

“You’ve fixed your form.”

“Raven,” she huffs out, breathless after the push of so many punches. She doesn’t let up. “Helped.”

“Ah.” The two women are on the same side of her, and without turning she can seem them exchanging looks, a standoff that’s all eyes and no words, written in the tension of the sweaty air. Daisy lets her punches slow, but the distraction of her workout serves to bring both pairs of eyes back to her.

“Five more minutes,” May barks, but there’s a curving smile to her lips, and Daisy lets her swings hit the bag with full force. “Want to spar?”

“Gladly.”

After that, it’s very hard to keep her attention focused on the exercise. The sparring mat is directly ahead of her, and she can watch both of them stripping off their jackets, stretching out. Raven has surprisingly thin arms, for all the force of muscle Daisy had felt and seen earlier. But when she bends down and flexes out, the muscles pop, and Daisy can see how a woman like that would pass unnoticed by those so practiced in seeing threats.

When the two engage, all thoughts of maintaining her pace slip out of her mind.

Whenever May spars with Daisy or Bobby, there’s a build up. A slower exchange of kicks and hits back and forth as they warm up in equal measure to the fight. But Raven throws the first kick with such speed that Daisy practically feels the air blow past her. There’s no build up here. May strikes back with the same snap of lethality that Daisy associates with the middle of a fight with Hydra.

It’s all snapping of fists and rolling on the mat, and neither of them seem to have a breath to give up.

Raven kicks her leg high at May’s head, and when the other woman ducks, she swings around, Daisy can’t really tell how she gets that high up in the air, but she lands on May’s shoulders, legs wrapping around in a pincer hold. A moment, just a breath in and out, and May is dropping to the mat and rolling, and they roll together across the floor.

May gets in a punch on Raven’s arm.

A kick to her stomach has May staggering backwards.

Daisy moves out from behind the punching bag to get a better view, wishing she didn’t need to blink because it’s a distraction from watching the two women fight.

May is balanced low to the ground, her legs spread as she steadies her body with her hand on the mat, and Raven crooks a finger, her smirk a delicate razor’s edge on her lips.

May meets the invitation with a sweep of her leg through Raven’s feet, and the vinyl covering of the mat scratches loudly under the weight of her shoe.

They slap their arms together, one two three, blocking and striking in the same motion, and it’s poetry, how they circle each other.

A nudge on her side is Daisy’s only heads up to the fact that she’s no longer the only audience member in the gym.

“How much of the show did I miss?”

Daisy glances at Bobbi and then quickly back to the sparring session that’s turned so quickly to a beautiful battle dance, and in that second, she misses May getting behind Raven. Bobbi hisses as May snaps her knee into the small of Raven’s back, and Raven hooks her feet around to bring May down with her.

She can’t see what happens, the two are pressed so closely together, but Raven slaps her hands down hard and twists in some way, and then it’s May on the floor and Raven with her hands against May’s neck.

Bobbi laughs, and the women break apart, May rising to her feet a little slower.

“Been a long time since someone’s taken you down like that.” It’s not a question in Raven’s voice as she offers her hand to May.

May’s face does something twisty, like she’s grinding down her teeth, and then it switches, a laugh breaking from her lips instead. “Been a couple of years.”

“Everyone needs to lose sometimes.”

Daisy is a little scared by the smile on May’s face. The last time she saw that look, the mission ended with five different reports to fill out. The paperwork took a whole week to file correctly.

In triplicate.

“Who taught you? Felt like Stick’s style.”

Raven shrugs, and takes the water bottle Bobbi hands her with deliberate, careful, casualness. It’s a move that rolls through her figure with the confidence of  _ I can do this all day _ . May narrows her eyes, and Raven only grins more, all secrets and sharp cheekbones.

As if she can sense Daisy’s thoughts, Raven turns that look on her and Bobbi, and now the forms to fill out are dancing the waltz around in front of her eyes, spinning faster and faster and faster.

Bobbi whispers, “shit, we’re doomed,” and Daisy can only nod her agreement. May catches her look and claps her shoulder with a firm hand as she walks past.

“You gonna finish that workout, or what?”

Daisy groans, her shoulders slumping down, and she turns the move into a complete folding of her body over how it feels. “Come on May, can’t I have a day off for just this once?”

Bobbi beats her to the response, qiuping from where she’s studying the weight rack. “If you want to keep up with that soulmate of yours, don’t skip a day.”

Daisy’s cheeks go bright red, and she chokes even though all she has in her throat is air.

“Course,” Bobby continues, as if Daisy isn’t praying for the gym floor to open up and swallow her, right here, right now, oh please won’t she just vanish? “From what I heard this morning, you’ve got the workout side of things covered,  _ just _ fine.”

“Victor always was a bit of an animal.” Raven’s face is placid, not a shred of malice on her doll like features, but Daisy can’t help but shoot a glaring look her way. Her hands are already fists.

“I think that’s all I need to know about my agent’s sex life.”

Daisy has never been so grateful to the nuns of St Agnes’ orphanage and their insistence of her learning her prayers before anything else, because she knows exactly which saint to thank for Deputy Director Melinda May, how many candles she’s going to light in honour of that most marvelous of women. She wonders if the Pope will count ‘ _ saved me from the dying of self embarrassment _ ’ as a miracle to count for canonization.

He totally should.

“You okay there, rockstar?”

Raising her shoulders in a half hearted little shrug seems the only right thing to do at Bobbi’s question, because as angry as she feels, there’s no words in her throat to express it.

“He was unmarked for a very long time.”

Daisy jerks her head up, and Raven’s still on the opposite side of the mat, but she’s looking at her with a sad expression, her lips curled down in a frown.

“I’m sorry?”

“Everyone thinks they’re okay with not waiting for your soulmate, but we rarely have to face those people. For what it’s worth, Victor made it clear the two of us would never be anything.”

There’s a lump in her throat, and the buzz on her fingers feels like the start of an earthquake, but nothing is shaking, everything around her is deadly still. Raven meets her eyes and doesn’t change that look of firm understanding. Daisy’s stomach is twisting but she can’t decide why. Neither of them waited. Why does this hurt so much?

Raven walks out of the gym without saying anything more.

Bobbi’s hand rubs slow circles on Daisy’s back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, I’m sorry, did you think I was going to solve the cliffhanger from last chapter?  
> You naive little souls.  
> Evil author is evil


	13. Chapter 13

“Heard Raven and May threw down in the gym earlier.” Victor sniffed at the air, and the sticky sweat on her shirt feels ever more obnoxious. Because that’s of course what he’s going to be picking up on after her workout. “Wish I’d seen that.”

Daisy rolls her eyes, and checks to make sure the door is locked before stripping out of her clothes, leaving them in a sweaty heap on the floor. Victor steps with her, towards the narrow door of the washroom. “Really?” She flicks the strap of her bra, and Victor makes a strangled noise in his throat.

Going for the shower, Daisy grins where he can’t see her.

His hands catch on her hips before she makes it there, and he pulls her back, nuzzling up her against her neck as his hands push down the straps of her bra, flicking open the clasp with deft surety. “You’re annoyed. What happened?”

Thin soft fingers push away his claws, and she shimmies out of her panties on her own, watching his expression through the mirror above the sink. The silence drags out, heartbeat after heartbeat, as she steps into the small shower stall, and Victor shoulders his way in after her. The door barely closes with both of them in there.

“Daisy,” he groans, and she rubs her hips back up against him. The water hits with cold shock, and her shudders press her closer to him. His nose presses into the mess of her hair as he reaches around and pumps the temperature up. Steam starts to fill the crowded space.

Her breasts barely fill the cup of his massive hands, and he grinds them down roughly on her chest, pushing in forcefully, pressing the flesh of her breasts against her ribs. It pushes her back against his chest as well, and his cock is hard against her butt.

“She push you too hard, sweetheart? Training you too much, that it?”

The little mirror suction cupped to the shower wall is  _ just _ enough free of steam for her to make out the flash of Victor’s smile above her hair, as the water falls down on them both.

She draws out her respondance, a slow, “no,” stresses it in time with the pulse she can feel under his skin when she puts her hands on his hips.

Victor’s grin is lopsided in the fogged up mirror, only one major fan showing through, and his eyes are dark gold. His hands flex, claws digging into her skin and leaving little pinprick type marks behind.

“Coulson then? He say something?”

This time, the answer is harder to get out, but she huffs a breath, and digs both sets of nails into the muscles of his hips, pushing herself up. “No. Not Coulson.”

The mirror is fully fogged up now, and the water is weighing her hair down, heavy on her shoulders. Victor’s hands trail over her skin as he moves his kisses, down her neck and over her shoulders. He scrapes his teeth against her skin, little drags of pain along her shoulder bone.

“What then?”

His words are low, a growl with the responding rise of his chest, the rocks that grate in his voice rolling around in his lungs. It rocks against her, her body moving with the press of his chest against her back. She flexes against him, and lifts her chin up, the arc of her neck open to the bite and press of his mouth.

Her lips curl in a heady smile, her skin flushed red. Breath catching hard in her lungs, she pushes back at him until he opens his hands, and she drops back to her feet. She sways, off balance on the wet tiles, but before Victor gets a steadying hand on her shoulder, Daisy is turning around.

She rakes her nails down his chest, pressing deep, leaving fat red marks in her hands’ wake. Victor hisses, and it’s loud over the patter of shower water. Her name drops from his mouth like a prayer. He steps back, forced against the wall of the shower, and she steps with him, following him. She pinches his nipples with the nails of her thumbs, and his moan is a rushing wind over her thoughts.

“Fuck. Daisy.”

Her heart beats loud in her ears, and it’s Victor saying her name, Victor arcing off the shower wall as she bites against the pulse of his neck, leaving teeth marks that heal up far too quickly.

She straddles his waist and he lifts her up, holding her level with his torso. The tiles are cold against her feet, sandwiched between the small of his back and the wall. She shuffles higher on him, her hips against the hard washboard of his abs.

“Shit, Daisy, girl-”

“Hush.” She presses her lips against his, and when he tries to tease her back, runs his tongue up against hers, she pulls back, keeps it chaste and quick. “Like this, Victor. I want you like this.”

She grinds her hips down on him, and he moves up to meet her, but his cock is just rocking between her legs, not inside her, and she throws her head back, letting the water hit her square in the face. Victor groans, and shifts her.

She squeezes her legs  _ hard _ against his ribs.

Hands pushing down on his shoulders, rising on the strength of her legs. Her growl, possessive snarl of, “mine, mine mine,” is nothing like his. She can’t get deep enough, but Victor closes his eyes, his head hitting the wall. She can feel him, up against her folds, his cock rocking against the space between her legs.

“Come for me,” she growls, and bites hard on his ear. “You’re mine. Come for me. Mine, mine, mine.”

His hands slide down, her legs moving against his side, and the hum of their marks touching quickly turns into a burning rush of pleasure.

She bites her lip, pressing down hard enough with her teeth to draw blood. She focuses on it, on the salty taste of blood in her mouth and pain on her lip, choosing that instead of the rising pleasure of how Victor’s cock rubs against her. The bond is a feedback loop between them, his pleasure feeding off her feelings, and the press of her legs against Victor’s hips is a clench against her pleasure.

He comes with a groan of her name, and the shower water keeps the sticky cum from clinging to their skin.

Victor is shaking as he continues to hold her up, and so she pushes at the wall, coaxes her legs down from around him. He looks at her, and his expression is a study in confusion. “You haven’t,” he murmurs, and she rakes her hands down his arms.

“No.”

She steps back. He follows, moves his hands off her body to the walls behind her, and the shadows in his eyes are taken over the haunting gleam of a predator. She licks her lips, and Victor copies the movement, slower. The taste of blood lingers in her mouth.

“Ain’t good to play games with me, baby girl.”

The shower head is lower in all the facilities, and when he leans down, his head bumps against it. The spray of water goes off in a sputter, hitting Victor directly in the face, catching him in the eyes. An affronted cat might well be a truer source for the noise he makes, not a six and a half foot tall man.

Daisy falls over almost double in laughter, which bumps her against Victor’s arm, and his efforts to correct the angle of spray go completely awry. He catches another round of water in the face, and his shaking and sputtering head brings his hair slapping into his mouth, catching in knots on his fangs.

Her laughter echoes off the glass sides of the shower.

Finally getting the shower head straightened out, and pushing his hair out of his face, Victor scowls down at her. Daisy has just enough time to make a little, “eep,” noise in the back of her throat before Victor’s broad hands have picked her up. He pushes her against the wall, holding her up so much her feet barely touch the side of the tub.

His glower turns into a full on, villainous smirk.

He tickles her, pushing his fingers against her ribs, her armpits, the little dip of space under her breasts. Shrieking, Daisy twists in his hold, and her laughter rapidly turns breathless as Victor’s merciless tickle attack continues.

“Victor! Victor, stop, ah, Victor!”

His hands go lower; he flicks two fingers against her clit, uses the rest of his hands to hold her open, and her legs flail against him as she squirms and begs. He’s tickling her, even there, and the water washes away her wetness as soon as it can gather, but she’s hot and breathless and twitching.

Victor kisses on her breast, her collarbone, her neck. Light, little tickles of his lips on her skin, and he’s laughing as well. It’s a long build up to her orgasm, the water’s coming cold out of the pipe, and then Victor changes the angle of his hand, presses his thumb over her clit, and it’s what she needs, a moment more-

She’s breathless already. All she does is huff and flutter around his fingers, her legs shaking as she comes down.

He fills his hands with soap and rubs them over her body, dipping his hand gently between her legs, working the soap softly over her skin. She closes her eyes, leaning her head back against him. He rests his head on hers, and folds his arms down across her chest as the water rinses the both of them off, swaying together under it.

Victor hums softly in her ear.

They stop before the hot water runs completely out, and Victor helps her over the lip of the stall, folding her in a fluffy towel. She throws him two of her old beach towels from the little hamper.

The steam follows them out in the bedroom, hanging in the air as Victor bullies her towards the bed.

“Sleep,” he orders his voice firm.

“But-”

He presses his finger against her open mouth, then pinches her lips shut. She has to resist hard the urge to roll her eyes. “No buts. If we’re going after Ward tomorrow, you need to get lots of sleep.”

She doesn’t. She stretches out under the blankets until Victor’s turned out the lights and climbs in beside her. She lays her head on his chest, trying to match her breathing to his, his fingers running through her hair.

She doesn’t remember closing her eyes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends the obligatory shower sex scene. Seriously - is this an official requirement for long form fanfiction or not?  
> Also, shower sex is super impractical. I fall down on my own in the shower, how do people stay upright while fucking?
> 
>  
> 
> Super powers. They have superpowers.
> 
>  
> 
> Victor is part cat, after all. The soles of his feet are probably ‘stickier’ than a human’s :D - Ozhawk


	14. Chapter 14

The engine hums underneath them, a thrum under her feet that echoes in the air against her skin, a balance of changing vibrations against her. She leans back on the counter, a grounding place to focus her hands, channel the shivers onto the granite top. Victor rubs his shoulder against hers, leaning against her, and she can feel the rough warmth even through the thickness of their two leather jackets.

She’s leaning in to rest her head on his shoulder when she catches May’s stern eye, the older woman’s eyebrow raised.

Daisy straightens up.

Coulson comes back a moment later, and there’s Raven and Irene with him, and while it’s only two extra people, the room feels far more crowded than it had on the mission two days before. Coulson taps his fingers repeatedly on the table.

She can see the bob of his adam’s apple as he works his mouth.

“No more second chances.” Coulson turns his head around the circle, meeting their eyes, holding the gaze for several seconds with each person in turn before moving on. “Ward gets no more second chances. He’s had plenty of them, we gave him his shot.”

“Damn right,” Daisy hears Hunter’s growl over the click of his gun.

Coulson’s eyes snap to the man; Hunter only flips him a mocking salute.

“He has allies now. Enhanced.”

Irene places her hand on Coulson’s shoulder, pulls him back as she steps forward. It’s a beautiful exchange of position, physically exchanging places as the leading of conversation changes. Coulson is anger, the charge forward with his hands curled into fists, held in fists even as he surrenders the center to Irene. Irene, who is a quiet, simple woman, with an oversized blouse and a simple skirt.

She folds her hands on the top of the cane, and smiles at them.

“Ward’s allies are not like him. He has convinced them it is he who represents the true SHIELD, and though they stand by him now, once his falsehood is made clear, they will break from him.”

May shuffles in place.

“How do you know that? What sort of intel tells you that, for sure?”

Irene’s smile is the kind of mystery that movie stars forever aim for, and rarely achieve. It’s matched by a twinkle in her eye, a little light on her cheeks as her smile turns her lips up and her face takes on that little smile throughout her features.

“So many talents my mutant brethren possess. To see what may be is mine.”

Daisy has seen the expression that now decorates May’s face only once before. After a Bus bound prank war had escalated and May’s favourite pair of boots had fallen victim to a soap tsunami. Hunter and Mack had been the victims of that displeased glare, and Bobbi had been too busy laughing at them to stop Hunter from throwing her under the bus.

This time, May’s glare gets answered by the unshifting smile of a woman too blind to see it.

“You may not believe me, Agent May, but you should trust me.”

“No one can really see the future,” interjects Jemma, and it’s a testament to how quiet they all are that even her soft spoken words bounce echoes off the walls. “That’s impossible, even a mutation can’t give the human brain that ability.”

Raven laughs, and it’s light peals of laughter that mingle with Victor’s gentle chuckle, the two of them locking eyes across the room and shaking their heads. It’s the exact same sort of gesture, a shared exchange in perfect unison, and then Raven breaks it to tap Jemma’s shoulder gently.

“As impossible as a girl who creates earthquakes or a man who turns into a giant green monster, yes?” A gentle set of words, kindly spoken, and still Daisy can hear the thread of pushed correction in how they come out of Raven’s mouth.

“But-”

Irene taps her cane against the floor much the same way an impatient school teacher one hundred years before might have tapped theirs, waiting for the class to settle down. “What may be,” and she stresses the middle word; it’s the firmest she’s spoken in all these talks. “Is not the same as the future. I see possibilities, threads of what might come. And whether you believe me or not will dictate whether we continue with our present course of action.”

“Let’s just go in and get rid of Ward. We can worry about the future after that bastard’s dead. Alright?” Hunter clips his ammo into his gun, and it’s a firm good noise to break the tension in the room. Jemma sighs, and nods, and Mack turns away to Coulson, babbling about the newest upgrades for his hand.

After all that, there’s surprisingly little planning to do. Fitz passes out the latest rendition of the icers, and Victor tells everyone, again, to shoot him if he’s threatening them in battle. Daizy makes to follow Jemma and Bobbi into the kitchen, because, “food is an essential part of mission prep,” but a hand on her shoulder pulls her back.

“Raven. What’s up?”

The dark haired woman, dressed in simple pants and a black leather jacket that looks a lot like one of May’s, gestures her towards the little seating area, a quieter spot away from the flow of traffic. Daisy smiles reassuringly at Victor through the glass, and tries not to think about sitting here with Ward discussing missions in the same sort of way.

“Daisy, how much has Victor told you about his past?”

Her eyebrows pull together, her mouth a tight line. “Does it matter right now? It’d rather deal with Ward before having this conversation.”

Raven’s movements are telegraphed before she makes them; her arm reaching out, her fingers grabbing hold of Daisy’s hand, tightening her hold as she moves closer on the couch. “Me and Victor, we have history with these people. I don’t want you to be shocked when it comes out.” Though Daisy opens her mouth to speak, Raven shakes her head and continues speaking. “I have no proof of what Ward might have told them, but when they see Victor or me, they will believe that you are on the wrong side.”

“Why?” It’s the only word that fits with this solemn, soft conversation, because the alternative would require yelling and begging and saying over and over again how this wasn’t what she wanted, this wasn’t what she asked for.

“Because I was a monster for a very long time.”

Daisy didn’t hear Victor coming up behind her. He’s simply there, pressing his hands into her shoulders, filling the space around her with his scent. She leans back, and feels the cold leather of his coat. Raven’s hands slide off hers, leaving slow spreading goosebumps in their wake. She feels him bending down behind her, his arms sliding down over her chest to pull her back against him, and she leans easily into it, frowning softly.

“I wish you would stop calling yourself that.”

She can feel his lungs moving against her. “It’s what I was before I found you.”

“And he was very good at it.”

Daisy glares sharply at Raven, who only shrugs and crosses her arms, saying quite clearly what words would never expression; it does nothing to help Daisy’s bundle of tightly wound nerves at all.

Victor rubs his cheek against hers, and she leans into the vibrating warmth of his chest. “Me and Raven; we’re a different sort than you. You’re naturally good. We had to work not to be monsters.”

“Well then.” She gets up and twists around in the same movement, and thank fuck she doesn’t stumble doing it because that would ruin the dramatic effect of it all. “I’ll just have to explain things to them, won’t I?”

Raven gives a whistling breath of approval, and she sees Victor’s shocked look as she pushes him back and marches for the door. A breath or two later, and his feet are echoing in the confined space of the staircase as he catches up with her.

The hum of the Bus’ engines is changing under her feet, and she can feel the tilt as it descends, the bits of science experiments left out on the tables sliding forward as Jemma and Fitz rush around trying to secure them all. Bobbi passes her a comm and smiles. Victor declines an icer; instead he pops his claws right in front of Hunter’s face and chuckles when the man steps back.

“Got all I need right here, pretty boy.”

Daisy isn’t quite sure, but she’s fairly certain Hunter’s last words before the jolt of the bus landing creates a noise too loud to talk over are, “he called me pretty.”

But she might have misheard.

They’re an all black circle, even Irene’s dressed in black tactical gear though she follows Victor’s suit and declines the offered gun.  Raven takes two to make up for it. Coulson keeps fiddling with the socket of his arm until May comes down the stairs and pulls his hand away from it.

“Keep comms open. Fitzsimmons, stay here, close the door up behind us. Mack, if we need medical, I want you on defense for Jemma.” Coulson, for all he looked ruffled and nervous, speaks with firm tones. “Raven, Irene, stay to the back.  Victor....” Victor’s smile shows teeth and Coulson doesn’t even blink, much less back down.

“Let’s try talking first.”

Daisy threads her fingers into Victor’s, and sees Bobbi doing the same with Hunter, a quick little squeeze before they pull apart while Daisy keeps holding on. Victor kisses the top of her head.

Someone, she doesn’t see who, starts lowering the ramp, and the sun is bright enough to get her eyes watering after just a moment, and it just keeps growing brighter as the ramp goes down and down and down.

May is the first off, Coulson not far behind her.

“It really does just look like a school.”

“Don’t suppose they’ll send out a touch guide, whole meet the teacher deal?”

But Hunter’s question is answered before he finishes it, as a loud alarm starts blaring and the large wooden doors in the center of the mansion are flung open by a man in a black leather suit who snarls, and starts running towards them. Light gleams off the knives in his hands.

“Welp.” Victor slides out from Daisy’s side, his claws growing longer, pushing his coat back from his waist with a slip, his fangs hanging over his lips and his eyes a bright gold. “Looks like little brother’s still trying to be a teacher.”

“What?” Daisy barely has time to scream before Victor is lunging forward, and there are other black clad people crossing the lawn towards them.

The sky rumbles, thunder clashing, clouds rolling in from nowhere.

Raven steps up to the other side of Victor as Daisy completes the three person guard in front of the group, everyone’s guns held out at the ready. The ramp servos groan as the Bus closes up rapidly behind them.

“God, I hate the X-Men.”


	15. Chapter 15

“Ward.”

The wind’s picked up, far too fast, and the storm has come out of nowhere on what was a perfect sunny day just five minutes before. It’s not raining, not yet, but Daisy can feel the tingling whisper of it on her skin. Her eyes are drawn over the line of leather clad men and women (young, they’re so young, is that girl even out of highschool yet), but she can’t spare a moment more for them because behind them the final member of this strange standoff, is-

“Ward.”

Daisy breathes his name at the same time as Victor, and the man in front of them snarls. Ward smiles, and it’s dark; his eyes have heavy bags beneath them, and he even dares to laugh a little, noise lost in the roll of thunder but Daisy can see his cheeks shaking, knows exactly what madness is in that brief moment.

“Skye. Oh, thank god you’re alright.”

Her thoughts narrow down. The patch of earth beneath his feet starts to rumble, there’s a line of shaking stones directly between them, and she doesn’t have to stretch out her hand to feel the travelling vibrations. Ward sways on his feet, and it’s her turn to smile, even as her voice is an angry snap.

“My name is Daisy, you twisted fuck.”

Her whole body moves forward, and the earth cracks open, a jagged line of dirt and flying rocks and the shakes echo back beneath her feet.

Ward goes flying backwards.

Victor’s coat gives her a whack in the face as he drops forward, lunging from all fours to spring into the chest of the man with metal claws coming out of his hands. They go tumbling together, and the whole lawn, even the walls of the school, shakes as Daisy screams his name.

She loses sight of them as Ward gets back onto his feet, and the pulse of vibrations is in her fingers only so much more, so much more power. Raven gives her a look but Daisy is stepping up, easily avoiding the rubble of the earth, stepping over the cracks.

Ward holds his arms out to her, hands weaponless.

Someone, it might be May, it might be Bobbi, is yelling her name. Lightning flashes, bright white and hot and close to her skin. She curls her hands into fists, and the whole world seems to go silent. She can feel the ground beneath her, the way it’s shifted and cracked, and further away, background noise to it all, the pounding of human hearts. Victor is a red thread of anger from the back of her mind, and she clings to it, digs her thoughts into the bond and PULLS it forward.

The snarl comes from the bottom of her chest, a rumble that’s more Victor’s than her own.

“Skye.”

The warble of Ward’s voice matches the trembling arc of the earth, a moment away from breaking. She takes one step, and then another.

Ward’s hand jerks towards the gun at his waist.

Both of her arms fling forward. The air arches and bends and a lightning bolt bends away from the ground. She can feel the air twisting, feel the way it buckles as it meets Ward’s breath. She feels how his heart jerks as the wave of vibrations clashes into him.

He falls, and it’s like watching a silent slow film, his body twisting as he crumbles backwards. Ward falls, and all she can do is breathe.

The dirt crunches under her feet as she stalks towards him, and it’s like Victor’s walk, lethal grace, a curve to her spine. Her vision is red. Her hands are curled into claws, bent around an invisible ball. Her heart feels as if it’s entirely stopped.

“Sk- Daisy.”

He’s struggling to rise. She sees his hands gripping onto the stones and she narrows her gaze, baring her thoughts down onto him. The air quivers above his back, and slowly pushes down.

“Daisy, I only want to help you. They’re lying to you. Daisy, stop.”

“Lying to me?” Her words are punches into the air. In the corner of her eye, she is aware of Raven trading blows with a white haired women, of Bobbi struggling over the shuddering ground to join her, of May firing icer after icer at the teenage girl and none of them dropping her. But all of that, the rest of the world, the storm, the clash of agents and mutants; it’s all unimportant to the boiling rush of blood in her veins. Her mind only registers Ward. “You’re the one who’s Hydra. You tried to kill me.”

“I would never.”

She fights hold the weight of vibrating air down on him, but he rolls, and she can’t focus her thoughts fast enough to follow him. He’s back on his feet, and his gun is in his hand, and it doesn’t look like an icer. “Skye, I love you.”

“Fuck. You.”

She can feel it; the boil, the push. Her mind is shaking like the terror of that first unleashing, with Sif there to watch the room shake apart. Only now the push in her blood is anger, and there’s red to coat her vision, a snarl to rip apart her lips. The trembles of the earth build.

Lightning cracks behind her ear. The air burns hot. Something flaps, leather in the breeze, and she hears the distant echo of Victor screaming her name. She spins on her heels, feeling the rolling earth, riding it into a faster movement away, and the lightning cracks a moment later, right on the spot where she had been. The dirt is seared black.

“Stand down, young one.”

The woman is in the air, she’s several feet above the earth, her white hair blown out in the wind. Daisy finds her eyes, and it’s staring into the white nothingness of the abyss. Her hands are bluffed over the grey swirls of cloud.

“And just who the hell are you?”

She knows already though, and she doesn’t need the briefing from Raven and Irene to know. The stylized belt around the woman’s waist; the distinctive hair that had been all over the same news coverage she’d watched back in the days of looking for evidence of more than the Avengers with powers; the gathering wall of lightning behind the floating woman. Storm, her name and the wildness she conjures up around her in the air.

“We can help you. Please Skye, let us help. You’ve been lied to.”

Kind words, from a woman who has Ward at her back, who gathers up the air even as she speaks and sends it gusting at Daisy. Dirt, rocks, bits of grass and leaves fly at her face.

Ward steps forward, and Daisy can’t make her eyes move fast enough between the two of them. They both start moving forward, and she’s forced to back up, and back up. Moving over the own rumble of the earth, using the quakes to sense the position of all that debris on the ground.

Out of the corner of her eye, Daisy sees one of the X-Men running towards the bus. She swears, turns on her heels as Ward yells out again, and starts the run across the dirty field herself. No, she corrects thoughts, the X-Man isn’t running to the Bus, she’s running  **_at_ ** it, and as Daisy pumps her arms, the thought of Fitz and Jemma racing loudly in her brain, the woman hits the side of the Bus, and in a last flip of brown hair, vanishes through it.

“Fuc- AHH!!”

Something hits her side, and it’s a boiling white hot pain. She looks down. There’s blood on her hand, on her hip, on her gun. Her jacket is torn open and the blood is black against it. Her whole side starts to burn. Her fingers shake, and the earth with it.

Her feet turn in slow motion.

Ward is there, not ten feet away, and his arm is outstretched with his finger still wrapped around the trigger of the gun. Daisy’s fingers press into the burning center of pain, the blood welling up, ared and warm on her skin. Her pulse is a drum line, loud in her ears, against her skin.

Ward’s expression is impossible for her to read.

She feels the coming roar through the red lines of their bond well before the noise of Victor’s anger is vocalized. It fills the air, driving out the noise of punches and pain, louder than the booming echo of thunder, louder than the pulse of her own heart. It is a roar and a scream and a feral cry. It is the vocalization of ancient instincts, and it curdles fear, primal fear, in her stomach.

He breaks from the clawed man, running up for Ward’s back with dirt flying from his claws and his coat in tattered shreds in the air.

The world slows. She’s breathing in, breathing out, the press of her palm against the wound in her side is pushing up against her ribs. Ward’s face drains of blood, He turns on his feet, the motion bringing him closer to her, a little more distance for Victor to cross-

Daisy fumbles at her waist for her gun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays folks! I'm survived my exams (barely) and now thoroughly enjoying my christmas break. Here's to everyone dealing with the winter storms and all this chaos of the holidays


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is what happens when I go home for christmas break, start losing track of the days :P
> 
> This heat up in this chapter ;) enjoy

The scents are all combined in the air. He can smell sweat, ugly, on the breeze, the fresh presence of so many people, the lingering taste of bodies both familiar or not. The earth cracks and rolls underneath his feet, and he digs up handfuls of dirt as he kicks off the ground. James is there, halfway across the lawn space between the two battle lines, and Victor meets him with an arm to the middle, and a slash of razor sharp claws to the face.

James goes down, and comes up snarling, as the flash of lightning reflects in bright sparks on his claws.

“Sabertooth.”

“Jimmy.” He licks one of his fingers, wrapping his tongue around the claw and drawing the blood in between his lips. Salty. Warm. Daisy is a pulsing source of sweetness in the back of his mind as he circles with James, the two of them trampling dirt down under their feet. Not so far off, Hunter and Coulson are back to back, trading blows and shots with limbs that come out of brimstone puffs, nearly clouding them entirely from view. From above Hunter’s head, a blue tail lashes out, swipes at his gun. Coulson snaps at it with his false hand, and pulls.

Mack shoots at a blond boy who blasts the projectiles from the air with bits of ice. The mechanic is staggering backwards, his lips moving in curses that even Victor’s hearing can’t pick up.

James swings his hand in a great arch, sharp claws catching on the leather of Victor’s coat and dragging down through the fabric as he slices from shoulder to stomach.

The healing flesh is a momentary itch.

“Come on, Jimmy. This ain’t about us.” He savours the twist of confusion on the other’s face; his scent is a familiar tune too well known to bother paying attention to, but his expressions aren’t so locked in Victor’s mind. It’s an amusing window into the soul.

They crash together again, and Victor’s vision goes red with an anger that isn’t his own. He wraps his arms around James’ waist.  _ Daisy _ . She reaches out through the bond but takes anger instead, and he happily gives it to her as he rips into the soft flesh of James’ side. The ground shakes as they roll on the grass.

James comes out on top, and he drives his claws through Victor’s shoulders, down to the knuckles, pushing him down and pinning him to the dirt. Victor’s laugh echoes as he takes a knee to the side, a head butt to his chin.

“The hell is this about, Sabertooth?” His features, under overgrown sideburns and hanging fog of cigar smoke, twist in righteous fury. “Teaming up with Hydra? That seems low, even for you.”

The name twists Victor’s stomach, curdling his instincts to red anger, and he grips James’ shoulders, digging his claws through leather and skin. He flips the smaller man, and adamantium claws rip through his shoulders and nicks bone, six rods of burning pain exiting his body.

He slashes across James’ chest, face, arms, a roar on his tongue and Victor throws him through the air to land twisted on a heap of overturned dirt.

His coat flaps against his legs as he moves forward, rocks crunching under his weight, his steps a rolling motion forward. Lightning cracks in the sky above as the ground shakes with another pulse of Daisy’s anger. “Listen Jimmy.” He’s struggling to breath, to hold it on and eek the bubbling red anger in check, keep his thoughts able to direct words. “If you think I’m gonna let you take my soulmate from me, you got another thing coming.”

James is struggling to his feet, unsteady, blood streaked bright across his forward. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Victor pushes a hand through his hair, snagging claws on dirt and grass, snarling. “Daisy. The girl he’s got his head twisted around as belonging to him. My soulmate.”

He wants to punch something, dig his fist into brick and earth and push until his skin is rubbed raw. Daisy is a throbbing presence in the corner of his thoughts, a steady point connecting their bond. Scared, angry, and so fired up the flames lick at his skin across their mental connection, and it’s fuel to kindle his own anger.

James swings his claws and Victor grabs tight onto his elbow, bringing him over his hip and feeling the satisfying give of bones under his hands.

“My soulmate. Mine.”

James groans as Victor flings him into the dirt, and steps on the broken arm, pushing twisted limb down, grinding his foot against rattling bone. His vision is going red, all he can feel in his chest is an angry roar, and his throat constricts around his words. His body bends over almost double as he pushes his claws into James’ chest, digging into muscle, scrapping past rib bones.

“Mine. She’s min-”

It’s a hot flash through his side, striking hard and burning through flesh. Daisy goes numb, details of her thoughts overridden by the pain that sparks through her body. And then all he can feel is her shock and her hurt and he turns on his feels, feeling as though the whole earth shifts with him.

She is clutching a bloody hand to her side, and the last thread of control inside Victor snaps.

His roar shakes the trees, and the others break apart as he cuts through the battlefields, running between them in the shortest path to Daisy without a care for how they all, SHIELD and X-Men alike, scatter in fear.

The scent of her blood is heavy on the breeze.

He watches Ward turn and Daisy is reaching for her gun and all he can feel is the red pulse of anger within his own veins. Daisy is trembling. Daisy is weak and falling, and he won’t get there in time. He kicks off a pile of rock, feel the air beneath him as he leaps from point to point, a constant running jump on all fours.

White lightning cracks in front of his eyes, and a weight crashes into his side. The grounds moves up to meet him, and he falls with fists pummelling into his sides, onto his face. Then claws join in with the pain. Victor’s face down in the dirt, and two sets of hands are cracking into him, beating him bloody. In the distance, Daisy screams his name.

Then the Colossus’ fist comes cracking down into his head again, and the air wipes under his coat as his knees start to give out.

Across the field, Daisy is trapped in the arms of Storm, and though she fights, he sees her growing weaker, and she’s quivering in his mind, their bond stretched so thin, so paper thin, the pain is cutting through her strength. It’s a faint bond, just a thread between them, and then Storm brings her hand down on the back of Daisy’s head.

She slumps forward, and Victor screams.

James and Colossus are between him and his fallen soulmate, and his skin is covered in blood, his clothes ripped and tattered, and all he can see is red, red, red everywhere.

There’s no words in his mouth, only a roar that echoes off the brick face of the school, and he sees their faces quiver in fear, drained of blood, and Ward is staggering away, his gun still in his hands. There are hands reaching out to pull Victor back, and he tears through them, feeling flesh and blood and metal beneath his claws.

Colossus backs off, and the smell of blood mingles with metal skin. But James is there, to block Victor’s rapid leap forward, with a snarl to match all that comes out of Victor’s mouth. Claws meet, and flesh tears, blood on his skin, and he can feel Daisy getting further and further away.

Storm, dragging the limp body away. Slowly away. And then much faster, as Colossus comes up, and he’s a collection of thick metal limbs wrapping around Daisy’s slim frame, and there’s no thought Victor’s striking into the flesh in front of him with abandon.

Blood splashes on his face.

His flesh splits open as adamantium claws cut through his face.

Blood runs in his eyes and pools on his collarbone, and all there is is the roar of his pounding heart in his ears.

There’s a sharp prick in his neck, and his blood is turning cold and numb. He reaches back and pulls a small dart from his skin. It oozes blue liquid as he crushes it between his fingers. His vision wobbles, little black dots dancing in front of his eyes.

And Ward is there, when he turns around, smiling as if he’s won. And Victor doesn’t know how fast the little poison darts work on others, but on him, now, it’s just a moment of flurry vision and then everything is stable red once more. His anger burns through the poison, and Ward’s scent is sharp with fear, spiking as Victor licks the sticky sweet blue mess off his claws.

“Come on, pretty boy. You wanna take my soulmate from me?”

He curls his fingers up, one, two. Beckoning. Daring. As Ward hovers and he can smell James coming back around towards them. Ward’s face is stark white, but he’s holding out his guns with hands that don’t shake, and Victor licks his lips. The air tastes of sweet, beautiful fear.

“Let’s dance.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now I normally would say that I'm sorry for this being late, and that I was distracted by it being christmas eve last night, but in reality, I was distracted by working on a christmas/hanukkah special gift for you all, and I'm not that sorry at all.
> 
> stay tuned to the end of the chapter for details on that :D

“She’s mine.”

The words rumble deep in his chest, and it feels like an echo, bouncing out of his hollow heart, and he lets them reverberate about. The quiver, more a laugh than words as it comes out a second time, and the sound of it; pule deliciousness in Victor’s ears.

Ward’s face is twisting. Red with rage, haunted by fear. His words are a cruel parody of a snarl, nothing like Victor’s rage, nothing but a flickering match to the burning wildstorm of the feral’s hate. The air already smells of coming death.

“Skye belongs with me.”

Victor steps up, closer, slow steps, measured steps. He sweeps his coat back and rubs his fingers together until blood is smeared on all of his hand. “Is that what you told them?” He tilts his head towards James, standing on the side, looking and smelling of uncertainty. “You tell the goodie two shoes she was your soulmate?”

“She belongs to me.”

“You just want her too.” He’s close to Ward now, close enough that a single leap forward would have their bodies together. But Victor lets the distance linger. “She doesn’t have your words, and you don’t have hers.”

“The words don’t matter! Skye is mine!”

Ward’s words are screamed sharp and shrill in the air, and Victor’s grin has never been wider. It feels like breathing clean air after years of chemical shit shoved up his nostrils. Clarity, and the thrill of hearing Ward breath his own doomed words.

_ SNIKT _ .

James’ claws extending and Victor’s heart takes up the beat of it.

Victor bends down to the ground, his knees bent beneath him as blood covered fingers push into the dirt. James steps up beside him, metal claws flashing as thunder continues to roll. It starts to rain, water coming down in thick rivulets, and the fresh churned ground is quickly turning into mud.

“Wrong words, pretty boy.”

Ward is frozen, he’s not even breathing, Victor can see his chest failing to rise.

And then he turns, and starts to run.

Victor is on him in a moment, grabbing legs and pants and pulling him down to the ground. His claws rip through fabric and soft calf muscle alike, and his ears are filled with the sounds of Ward’s terrified screaming.

The gun in Ward’s hands is going off and going off, bullets passing through Victor’s arms and getting stuck in his chest and lungs. He keeps swinging his claws like it’s nothing but a sunny day and Ward’s body is only fresh meat beneath him.

Blood hits the top of his face and runs down into his eye and Ward is still screaming.

It’s no longer words, just pain, and the blood drowns out all other scents.

Someone <sub> _ metal claws, cigar ash, leather jacket  _ </sub> tries to grab his hands, pull him away, distracts him with a catch at his wrist. Victor slashes at that arm as well. A howl rises up in his chest, building into a tight crescendo as he leans in, close enough to feel breath against his lips, breathing back hot and heavy in Ward’s face.

“She.”

He digs his claws into Ward’s shoulder, feels around until he has collarbones in his hands, twists until they crack and Ward is arched around, his back off the muddy ground.

“Is.”

He pushes his hands down, through the cracked raw edges of Ward’s bones, scraping his own skin open on the broken shards. He jerks his hands out, and pulls muscles and veins with his fingers, bits of flesh clinging to the underside of his claws. He scraps lung as well, and Ward’s breath turns into sharp wheezing shudders, entire body twisting.

Victor’s hands, covered in gore, sticky with the blood of the man he kneels up, close around the vulnerable, exposed throat. Ward’s arm twitches a last, weak attempt to bring the gun up around on Victor. It falls out of his fingers instead.

“MINE!”

Serrated claws dig in, slicing through fat and muscles and tendons until he has bone in his hand. His arms strains against the confines of his coat sleeves, and his rage is a bubble of red hot irons in his throat. A great cry rips free of his lungs.

Ward’s head snaps clean off it’s mangled body.

A girl screams in the distance.

Someone closer to him vomits.

He smells it all. The fear. The death. The blood dripping slowly to coat his hands as he continues to hold the severed head. A glob of muscle drops from bone to his hand, and a moment later, to the mud by his feet. Boots step up in front of him. Heavy footsteps. Ripped denim pants, and a familiar scent; the smell of old cigars.

“You,” the words are a slow drawl in a voice that carries just the hint of an old accent, the trace of familiarity that’s so very much attuned to his own thoughts, and still coming out from behind the hazy red fog that surrounds him. “Are cleaning this mess up, bub.”

The ends of his hair drag in the bloody mess of Ward’s chest, coming up matted and smelling strongly of the gore that clings to every thing about him.

He cups the dismembered head in his claws, and presses until the skull cracks.

“Where.” His words are a snarl, deep in his chest, and he lifts his eyes up, pupils burning gold. “Is.” He rolls forward, over the corpse, throwing the head to the side where it lands in a mud pile with a squelch. He moves smoothly onto all fours, waiting, ready to pounce. “She.”

It’s not a question, it’s a demand, and it comes out of his mouth with a growl, birthed deep in his chest and coming out from between his fangs. Deep and lasting and the man in front of him takes a step back. He can’t smell her anywhere nearly, only the traces of her. Footprints in the grass. Hands on the dirt. Her sweet smell coming from those thin contact points all around him, but not  **_her_ ** .

The bond is a thin, unmoving thread leading from the back of his mind to the point that should be her. Alive, but unconscious, unmoving, and he can’t follow it. The bond disappears into the darkness and all that he knows is she is there. Somewhere.

Far better to drag blood over his cheeks and ask the ones in front of him where she’s been taken.

He can smell the horror on them, the revulsion, and it’s sparks to keep and guide into a fire of fear. Afraid, of him. Afraid of what he’ll do if he doesn’t get her back. His mate. His missing mate. Taken from him. Injured, and afraid, and his hackles rise up. He needs her BACK. The pounding of his heart matches the racing thunder of his thoughts, and it’s a push to hold onto the control that keeps him back, keeps him asking for answers instead of ripping them to shreds and dragging blood on his way to find her.

The end of his control is rapidly approaching.

He begins to lean forward, his limbs anticipating the leap into action, and the man in front of him extends gleaming metal claws in front of his face. The smell is sharp, pungent, familiar. It blows through his nostrils and he can taste it on his tongue, and it’s hitting old memories in his brain he’d left forgotten.

Pack, brother, James. The muddy field, the bullets blowing past their heads, blood on his claws and in his eyes. The rising roar of canons. Metal claws in his face. Metal all around them, green and smelly. A girl screaming.

Victor jerks his head back, nostrils blow wide.

James stares down at him.

“You going to be reasonable?”

Victor huffs, and rises to his feet, pulled up as if there are strings attached to his shoulders and the top of his head. Rain drops carry blood from his hair down his coat and sides.

“Where is my soulmate?”

James smiles, and there’s a trace of humour poking out from behind the gruffness. A little appreciation, a little bit of understanding. And more behind it, for how the flashes of memories back from behind the veil of years of forgetting and fill in the gaps. What to expect, what he’s known all along, but tried so hard to leave behind.

“She’s really yours.

“Yeah,” Victor snarls, and feels it pass out around him, in the shocked, still frightened faces of the X-Men, in the conflicted faces of the SHIELD agents now breaking apart from the mutants and regathering. “She’s  _ mine _ .”

“Now take me to her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so! Holidays special gift for you all! I've written up a Holidays short and will be posting that this afternoon/evening (depending on when I'm allowed to take a break from all the family stuff). It will be posted as part two of "Love and Monsters" series, so you can subscribe to that for a direct update, or just pay attention to the series link here.
> 
> Yell at me in the comments if I don't have it up within twenty four hours of this chapter going up :P
> 
> Happy Holidays to everyone! Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, wishing you all the best this holiday season


	18. Chapter 18

The room smells foul.

She’s laid out on the medical slab, and her face is quiet repose. But the blue walls smell of chemicals and the floor has the lingering traces of cleaning agents struggling to strip away blood, and it all comes together to smell foul and wrong and tormented in his lungs. His fingers flex into fists.

“You can’t bring him in here. Logan, I don’t know what you were thinking, but you need to turn around and wa-”

Victor’s claws lash out, and his hand finds a hold wrapped tightly around the blue fur of McCoy’s throat. He steps forward, and his arm jerks in to bring their bodies together, McCoy’s large fingers scrabbling at Victor’s shoulder.

“Out of my way.”

McCoy’s body is heavy, thick bones, and lots of muscle, and Victor picks him up with on arm, no problem. His shoes scrape against the tiled floor, and Victor throws him across the room, to land with a heavy crash on the cart, tools flying, an IV bag overturned. McCoy rises in a ball of snarling blue. James is there, holding out his claws with a flash of metal, stopping the doctor.

Victor takes the two quick strides to Daisy’s unconscious form.

Her hair’s been tied back, out of the way, and his fingers snag on the ponytail so he keeps pulling, shredding the elastic band and laying her hair loose about her shoulders. His thumbs brushes her cheek, his hand turning to cup her chin and tilt her face. A bruise on her jaw line, right beneath her ear, and the beat of his heart that had started to settle picks up again.

He sniffs over her skin, bending down to press his nose against her cheek. Bad scents. Another’s scents. On her skin and on her cloths and he rubs his hands hard on her arms, presses his cheek to her breast bone, and rubs his smell off on her exposed skin. There’s the smell of blood on her as well, far fresher than it is in the rest of the room, and he tracks it down to her side, the bump of bandages underneath the plain tshirt.

“What’s he-”

“Marking her. Adding his scent to hers.” James’ voice is low but his words gentle over McCoy’s shock, and Victor can start to feel okay. He pulls back, his hands lingering on Daisy’s shoulders, and slowly lifts his head up to look at the two other mutants.

“How long?”

And though his words are gruff and nonsensical, the question comes out anyways. He looks back down at her face. She looks so peaceful she could be simply sleeping. James gives a gruff cough, and McCoy steps forward. It’s hard to see under the blue fur, but he smells apologetic.

“I can’t say. Ororo knocked her out pretty hard, and well, her powers might heal her faster. I can’t say.”

“Don’t know?” He wants to growl. Wants to pace and stalk and drive them out of the room. The smell of his anger starts to fill up the space, hot air mixing with the hot smells. James’ nose crinkles.

He’s got the impression that James is rolling his eyes. “Ain’t like he drugged her.”

And he hadn’t. Victor can smell that plainly, there’s not even a saline drip, and Daisy smells like herself; injured, sweaty, but still herself.

He gives a sharp stiff nod.

McCoy grudgingly gives up one of his chairs, for Victor to sit next to Daisy and hold her wrist and keep his eyes on her face. James leaves, and comes back with a bundle of clean clothes; grey sweatpants that are just barely fitting around his waist and say Piotr on the tag.

He’ll deal with the fact that he’s wearing a student’s clothes at a later time.

McCoy is talking quietly about doing a scan, just to check, since her body is probably exhausted from using her powers so much, and who knows what sort of building damage a possible concussion might have. Victor snarls, and the man backs off to silence.

He loses all track of time. It could be hours, it could be a whole day.

Daisy’s eyelids flicker with movement. She groans.

Victor squeezes her fingers.

“Easy there, sweeties.” One hand gripping hers, the other smoothing through her hair, brushing his thumb against her forehead. “Easy.”

“Victor?”

Her voice is hoarse, her single word rough from the disuse and abuse, and he makes a clucking sound with his teeth. He bends down to kiss the soft skin on the back of her palm, light, soft, but still lingering. When he brings his head up again, after a second brush of his lips on her hand, her eyes are open, if a little unfocused.

“How you feeling?”

“Like I’m going to throw up.”

He can feel McCoy moving in behind him, but it’s James who puts the bucket in her lap as Victor holds her up, and keeps the hair out of her face she her stomach heaves up the broken ramins of her last meal.

She sighs as he rubs her back, leaning sideways onto him.

Then she notices James.

“Oh! Uh, weren’t we fighting you? Like, I remember Victor stabbing you.” Her forehead is all crinkled up, and Victor would be worried about memory issues if he couldn’t smell the lack of injuries around her head, the rightness back in their bond. Instead of worrisome, her expression is endearing. “Stabbing you a lot.”

“Happens to me a lot, girlie.”

And he pulls out a cigar, despite McCoy’s glares of frustration, and despite the wide eyes of Daisy’s shock and the way that she gasps at him a little bit like a fish out of water. Victor presses a kiss to the top of her head.

“Ward,” she asks, in a very quiet voice.

Victor’s arms go tight around her, and he pulls her back against his chest, despite the little hitch in her breath when he accidentally presses against the wound in her side. Her head rests under the crook of his arm, his chest flush with ehr side. The height’s a little strange, thrown off by the bed and chair. But she’s in his arms, safe, and he holds onto her tightly. Breathes in the deep rich smell of her.

“Dead.”

He’d thought there’s be more emotion to it. Certainly bringing the man down had turned his eyes red and his thoughts monstrous. Telling her that the cruelty that had followed her for so long was gone.... There should have been anger in his voice, pride at being done with it, the possessive of his his mate being safe and his again.

His voice is dead though, the simple word spoken like there was not the beating pulse of anger behind it. Simple. Understated. A word, and nothing more. So simple. So easy to say.

Daisy starts to shudder against him.

He feels the air leave her lungs, all blown out at once. The shakes start in her shoulders, and all too soon she’s twisting around in his hold, and he has a brief glimpse at a tear streaked face, before she shoves her face into his chest, hiding her tears behind his shirt. There’s not an audible noise to her sobs, but the physical side is all the worse for that, for how silent she is, how it’s all so bottled up.

He kisses the side of her face, the top of her hair, and he smoothes his fingers over her back. Her hands fist in the fabric of his borrowed shirt, he can feel it pulling tight over his shoulders, and he doesn’t mind at all if it’s helping. She is scared, crying, crashing, and all he can do is hold her until it passes.

McCoy passes him a box of tissues.

Daisy lifts her head up, sniffling, and he drags his fingers over her cheeks, wiping up the salt tracks that stain them. “S-Sorry. Just.... He’s really dead?”

“Yes,” is Victor’s simple response, at the same time that James bites the lit cigar in his mouth, and says, “no one comes back from what Victor did to him.”

Daisy’s eyes are wide at she looks up at him, but dry now, and she’s stopped shaking. There’s so many questions written on her expression as she looks at James, but all he has for her is a nod, and a smile, and “I’ll got tell the others you’re awake.”

“How,” she asks Victor as the door slides quietly shut behind James. “How did you kill him?”

“You don’t want to know sweet heart. It was messy.”

Messy, and bad, and one of these days she was going to see the truth of the monster under his skin. It wasn’t going to be today though. She’s warm in his arms, and she gives him a little half smile when she turns back to him, and the warm ball of safety hasn’t gone down in his chest yet.

He’s going to keep her, as long as he can, even if he doesn’t deserve her.

Daisy sits up, properly, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, and now it’s McCoy coming to her attention. He knows the moment she sees the other man; surprised that she hasn’t noticed him before. It hasn’t been like McCoy had been trying to hide. Daisy gives a quiet little, “oh,” and he watches her eyes go first wide, and then into that schooled mask of careful thought that falls in place whenever she has to hide her emotions.

It’s actually a very cute expression.

Fangs make it hard to smile kindly; McCoy takes a fanged mouth and monstrous blue fur and creates an expression so gentle that the only choice is to fold in compliance before it. Daisy’s expression is thoughtful as they shake hands.

“I’m Doctor McCoy. Just call me Hank. Otherwise Kitty starts making Star Trek jokes.”

“I’ll play by the house rules.” Her laugh is a warm noise in Victor’s ears, and he feels his eyes soften as he adjusts his hug hold around her. He lets the protective clinginess slide, his arms settling down on her hips, hands on her hands. Her hands come down to cover his.

“I’d like to check your bandages again, clean it up. And check for a concussion, then then you can go. Most likely your teammates are frightening all the students.”

McCoy shines a light in her eyes, and has her follow his finger in front of her face, and she lifts up her shirt so he can change the white bandages on her side. He shows her the bullet he’d pulled from her, and smiles, and Victor smiles along with them. He nuzzles head into into the side of Daisy’s neck, and she runs her fingers over his scalp. McCoy eyes them, his expression watchful.

“Well, you seem to be all clear.  Change the bandages every two days; keep it dry, try not to shower for at least a week. And I’m sure that Sabertooth,” McCoy seems to stutter over it, and yeah, that’s a weird feeling, “will let me know if I was wrong.”

“Sure will, Doc.”

Daisy hops off the bed. Victor keeps an arm around her waist as they go out into the hallway, the space just as quiet and bland and blue tiled as the med bay. It’s once they’re in the elevator that Daisy lifts her head from his arm, and in a shocked sorta voice says, “wait, did he say students?”


	19. Chapter 19

“Daisy!”

Fitz is the first to jump up and throw his arms around her. She’s soon in the center of light hugs and noises of relief, and Hunter’s firm clap between her shoulders has her leaning onto Jemma for support, and May, MAY! Comes over to hug her, leaning in as everyone else finally starts to break away, and wraps her arms over Daisy’s shoulders.

“How are you?”

Daisy shrugs, and the movement pulls on the bandages on her side, but it’s not too bad, just a grimace of pain she can almost ignore. “Hurts, but uh, still alive, so that’s cool. You guys?”

“Fitz shot someone!”

Jemma looks oddly happy, and far too excited about this, and Daisy follows Fitz’s awkward little eye shuffle towards the girl sitting in the big armchair. She has a streak of white in her hair, and a delicate smile that wavers on her face, and she looks back at Daisy and raises her eyebrows.

“It was one of those fancy knock out guns y’all have.” She speaks with a long, drawn out southern accent, and she looks first at Daisy, and then at Fitz as she speaks .”Ya can stop worrying about it.”

Ftiz’s face does a little freeze; Jemma makes a sputtering noise. Then she pulls Fitz across the room, practically dragging the other scientist with her, and Rogue looks frightened, but Jemma is setting Fitz in front of her. Fitz looks confused, and Daisy feels the same emotion showing on her face, showing on everyone’s face. Except for, she notes, Raven and Irene.

“What? Did Ah say something wrong?”

Fitz shuffles his feet, and Jemma elbows him in the side. “Uh, I don’t suppose you have  _ sorry, I’m so sorry _ as your soulmate words?”

Raven laughs, James bristles. The woman sits up, straight in her chair, and Jemma sets back as Fitz offers up his arm. Daisy sees him push up his sleeve, but she can’t see what words are on there, not at the angle that she has.

“Oh. Ah....”

“My name’s Fitz.”

“Rogue,” she says softly, and shakes his hand with glove covered fingers. “Guess uh, guess yah already know who Ah am.”

Daisy bits her lip, and leans back on Victor’s shoulder. He drapes one arm across her chest, holds her against him, and she can feel his smile across their bond.

“Sorry for shooting you.”

“It’s alright darling. Be surprised how many friends Ah meet tha way.”

Rogue giggles, and Daisy watches Fitz’s face get taken over with a smile that is nothing more than blindly brilliant. Rogue shifts over, pats the chair cushion next to her, and Fitz slides right down into the space. It seems like everyone in the room is watching as the two awkwardly fiddle with their hands, and then end up holding hands tenderly.

Raven meets Daisy’s eyes, and smiles.

There’s a whole slew of introductions and names after that. Coulson points out one after another of the Xmen members. Piotr, and Ororo, and Kitty; the man that Victor called James is introduced as Logan. Somewhere in the rush of standing and talking to each other, Daisy is guided to a couch seat, looking up as Victor stands between her and the room.

His back muscles bunch up tighter underneath his shirt. Crossed arms, and and imposing growl, draw and end to the gentle friendly sound of the conversations. Startled looks that Daisy can just barely see from behind the bulk of Victor’s body.

“Sabertooth.” That’s James, and there’s a growl to his voice that sounds so close to Victor’s own growl, that same low tone, the same primal deepness. “Step aside.”

There’s no such movement from Victor.

“Sabertooth,” James says again, as Daisy struggles to rise to her feet, putting her hand on Victor’s back to pull her up. Victor, sensing her intention, shuffles backwards, until she falls with a huff onto the couch cushions.

“Just want to talk to her. Let me through.”

“Victor, it’s fine.” Fine, fine, fine; she sends the feeling across the bond. She’s fine, he doesn’t have to get so protective, doesn’t have to worry about her like this. He’s all concern; all worked up into a fine edge of bloodthirsty protectiveness. The tint of red on the edge of his thoughts, so recently fallen away, now growing again as James pushes his patience.

“Victor,” she says again, and gives a firm, hard thrust against the wall of his thoughts. After a moment, she feels it give.

He steps, not all the way out of James’ way, but enough that Daisy can see the mutant without any pressure on either of their necks.

James has a hard, chiselled face, the lines of anger on his expression so deep set on his face that she wonders ift they’ve been set into his DNA. She tries a smile up at hi, and though there’s no change in his features, she thinks she spots a light sparkle in his eyes.

“So. You’re the girl who tamed the wild beast.”

“As if I could.”

Victor’s thoughts, a point of red through the connection of the bond, stir up and the sparks of anger are visible in the clench of his fists.

Daisy though... Daisy can only watch the chuckle on James’ lips, the lightening of his locked off expression. He nods at her, and then, with another look at Victor that’s matched by a flexing of claws, turns away.

Raven laughs, and drapes herself on the side on the couch, kicking her feet against the back, near to Daisy’s shoulder. “Relax Victor. Baby brother’s just a little worked up since someone bonded with our daughter.”

“Our daughter?” James’ voice is harsh, his eyes snapping to look between Raven and Rogue. There’s enough tension in his body to make Daisy worried about him snapping clean in two as he starts forward. “What sort of bullshit you on now, Mystique?”

Daisy wants to laugh, and she holds it in for one breath, two breaths, and then her eyes meet up with Irene’s, as unseeing as they are, and she can’t keep it in past that point. The sound of their laughter mingles together in gentle harmony as the rest of the odd, out of place group, looks at them in startled amazement. Only Rogue doesn’t seem to think that they’re fully crazy, and even her expression is tempered by out of place confusion.

They don’t get it at all. They don’t get the insanity of this whole situation, of the utterly movie perfect moments of not realizing the connection between the teams before they got fighting.

Daisy wipes a hand across her mouth and waves off Coulson’s concerned approach. “Rogue’s.... Rogue’s who you meant when you said someone you care about, isn’t it? That’s who Fitz is meant to make happy?”

Irene is smoothing her face down into calm as well, and still spares a look of amused solidarity with Daisy before the serene expression takes hold completely. “Indeed. And though it may be informal, the affection the dear James feels for her is very much fatherly.”

“Wait.” Rogue’s voice is gentle and small and she pulls herself across the room towards Irene, stopping with her body still leaning forward, her shoulders drawn tight, her eyes big and wide and oh so young looking.

Irene and Raven both sit up straight. The look on each of their faces matches the other, a perfect reflection of hope and restrained belief and a wary, but present, relief.

Rogue’s eyes are locked on Irene.

“Mama?”

Irene’s choke sob is alone in the silence of the room, and then all sorts of noise breaks out and swallows it. Rogue steps forward, and then Irene steps out to meet her, and Raven has come to her feet, her hands shaking, biting her lips, tears in her eyes, her face a study in conflicting emotions.

Irene holds out her arms, and there’s a moment, a single half breath, where everything is still.

Then Rogue lets out a broken sob, and falls against Irene’s chest.

Daisy’s fingers are covering up her lips. Victor blows a hot breath out. Fitz makes a choking sound in the back of his thought, his hand outstretched, eyes wide and heart open on his face.

Irene’s fingers shake in Rogue’s hair.

“My baby girl... My baby girl....”

There are no tears on Irene’s face, but the cracks in her voice serve well enough to be that conduct of emotion. Broken. Raw. Daisy hears the tears in her voice, and her heart might shatter completely.

Raven is so calm, so still, it’s like turning to look at a statue to look at her.

“I.... I’m sorry, Mamma.”

Irene’s hand cupps Rogue’s neck, tugging up her shirt, fingers against fabric and not skin, and it’s a slow push to draw Rogue’s face up to her one more. “Ssh, ssh. Don’t say a thing. It was always going to happen this way.”

“But-”

“You can’t think you were the only mutant of the family.”

A hand on her shoulder turns Rogue around to face Raven, Irene’s frame a simple soft background to the young woman taking in the other with a flicker of fear in her eyes. Fitz and Logan take identical steps forward.

“What are you talking about,” Rogue asks, and Daisy watches Raven’s expression, fall, fall, fall. It teeters on the edge of complete loss, and then, in the space of a heartbeat, falls over, and the woman herself is utterly lost.

“You’ve grown up so much.”

**_Sknit._ **

Loud in the stillness of the room. No one else has dared to breath, but James’ hands move with the flash of six silver blades.

“Hands. Off. Mystique.”

The venom in his voice is justified, Daisy knows. The Xmen have been fighting Raven for years, and she’s just as much on the side of the villains as Victor is, but....

But....

Her mind simply won’t pair the cruel way his lips sneer out Raven’s name with the way that Raven’s fingers seem to linger as they fall away from Rogue’s shoulder.

Irene’s lips are a thin line.

Fitz’s fingers find Rogue’s gloved hand, and squeeze her fingers tight.

“Rogue?”

“Fitz, I-”

Irene raises her hand, and even James pulls his claws back. She’s a conductor, perfectly in change of the room, with one hand on her cane and the other in the air, holding them all back, leaving the entire company waiting for her queue. Daisy slow exhales, the entire lungful of air gone in a single breath.

“I raised Rogue, from when she was an infant. Raven knew her then, through me, though in a different form.” Ororo mutters something under her breath that Daisy doesn’t hear. Kitty grimaces at her. Logan lets out a huff. Raven folds in on herself, her shoulders pulling in towards her chest as she takes the first slow step backwards. Irene speaks without the care of what any of them are doing. “Circumstances separated us. That is all you are privy to know.”

It is Ororo who makes the first move. She steps up, sweeps her arms out, and there’s an unearthly grace to the patterns of her movements, in the lift of her chin. “Then so long as Rogue wishes you here, you are welcome.” The lightest of finger touches to James’ shoulder, and the claws are gone. Ororo turns to smile at each of them in turn, nodding at Rogue, and Rogue lets out a breath that brings her whole body down with it. Irene rubs a hand between her shoulder blades.

“Now unless anyone else has some shocking revelations, I would like to eat.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this has been a week since an update. I had things finished well in advance, and then just a few hours before wedsday's update was supposed to go up, I decided to change everything, and rewrite the last two chapters
> 
> That's right folks! This is the second to last chapter!

The room smells like cleaning agents, lemon and chemicals, the faint hint of some aging individual underneath the attempts to scrub them away. Sheets that smell strongly of bleach, and pine from the old wooden dresser. Victor shuts the bedroom door, and the smell of teenagers fades.

In front of him, Daisy’s feet have already found the path to the bed.

It’s not sitting down, the way her rear hits the top of the mattress, but it’s not falling either, far too much controlled to be something like that. She slides down, feet in the air by the side of the frame, and back stretched out on the quilt, and her eyes peer up at him from over the lines of her face, awkward and strange view for the both of them.

“Victor,” she says, all soft and delicate, and he’d fall to his knees, right here, right now, if she asked it of him. She beckons her finger. He comes rushing over, leaves a breezes behind him that lifts the edge of the rug, moving through the oversized space. He stands over her, his knees on either side of her hanging legs, head a million miles away from her, and he’s content to just-

_Look._

Her hair is spread out in a tangled mess behind her head, pulled out of a ponytail too fast and now left to linger in tangles and waves about her head like some kindergartner's angel hal. Her lips, rough chapped skin that gets dragged by her tongue and catches the little droplets of moisture that it leaves behind. The line of her collarbone, framed by the gentle neckline of her shirt, the hint of skin behind the sensibilities.

“Victor.”

She says his name with the claiming power of owning it, owning him, and there’s that perfect note of reasonability. The wild inside him, curls and peers at hearing the same possession from his mate. The claim he’s put on her matched by that quiver in her voice.

The bond flickers, and the want is a tug towards her that’s as irresistible as it is gentle.

He bends down. Fists his hand in the sheets, presses his lips against her mouth, so light he barely tastes her. She whines, reaching up for him, dragging her nails over his neck, pulling him in, pulling him lower. Victor lets Daisy guide him, pull their mouths together, one thin point of contact between their bodies.

Then he pulls up, pulls his mouth off her with a great heave of self will, and it’s just her hand on his neck as he stares down at her, drinks her in, and he can feet the fluttering pace of ehr heart beneath her fingertips against his skin.

Daisy doesn’t say a word. Licks her lips and meets his eyes, and just breathes.

He wants her. He wants her so bad.

But the smell of dried blood clinging to the bandages on her side is present, so present, and there’s no ignoring the way that her lungs catch on every other breath.

Victor sighs, and leans down for another soft kiss.

Daisy’s moan tastes delicious as he swallows it up.

“You’re hurting.”

A rumble quiet in his chest. Displeasure. It gives an edge to his words that he can’t hold back no matter how he might try. His hand moves to cover her side, presses against the layer of shirt that softens the feel of the bandages but do not hide it. His thumb rubs against the crinkling combination of layers.

“I’m fine.” The protest is firm in her mouth, but he can smell the wavering changes from her body, the way her smell dips and sours with the contract against her injury. He hasn’t even seen the wound, doesn’t need to know what it’s done to her body. “Victor, really, I want you now **_more_**.”

She’s hurting, but she wants him.

It’s a twist of events, of hints at her thought process that don’t quite add up in his mind, and yet still are reality. The animal part of Victor is perfectly, fully, aware of how she smells of want and lust. And then his human thoughts pop in, intruding to point out how the pain clouds the edges of her scent, leaves a sour taste in his mouth, and giving in to the desire won’t help her injury at all.

All of his thoughts short out as the soft press of fingertips shifts from his throat to his jaw, thumb over his lips.

“Victor.”

Her voice is soft and low and there’s the hint of pleading in it, the beginning of a question, the slow build just starting on the path to a demand. His eyes snap open. He didn’t even realize he’d closed them. Daisy smiles up at him from her place at the edge of the bed, and it’s all a gentle set of lines on her face. Her hand curls around the line of his cheekbone.

She pulls him down with the guiding pressure of her hand, and down, down, down on top of ehr frame.

Victor climbs to his knees on the edge of the bed, mattress buckling under his weight, and his fingers stretch out beside the soft halo of her hair.

“Don’t try pushing yourself,” he whispers in her ear, the last bit of self control he has in this moment slipping away. The warning is the last bit of his humanity, and he gives it to her with the tender caress of a kiss. “I’ll know.”

She nods, frantically, moving her head up and down, and lays her body still beneath him. “God, Victor, just-”

He swallows up her words, and chases her breath with kisses down her throat, and across her skin.

She may lie still beneath him for now, but he feels that desire to move and twist and reach back for him. He puts his hands over wrists, pushing her down in the mattress, digging into her skin in that short moment.

“Stay.”

He bites her neck, and her collarbone, and the exposed hollow between her breastbone. Daisy moans, and arches up towards him, and he flashes her a cold look upwards.

She bites her teeth down into her lip, and stays silent.

The beast in him is rising, and rising fast, and he takes another slow sniff, and breaths out.

The beast _takes_.

He knows her scent. He knows to chase the line of her body, down through the fabric of her flimsy shirt, ripping it open and pushing his face against her breasts, between the two perfect mounds of soft flesh. His hands curl over her waist, one resting against unmarred soft flesh, the curve of her waist delicate under his pushing grip.

The other hand falls to lightly trace finger pads against handages.

In the middle of stomach, Victor finds the puckered, marred skin of another bullet wound. Daisy’s hands, loosening their root in his orders to stay still, twitch. There’s a hand on his hair; Victor growls, and Daisy’s arm moves back down to her side, but not before she drags her nails along his scalp, and whispers, “please.”

He licks the jagged line from the surgery, running up from her belly button, and traces the rough barbed tip of his tongue over the miniscule bumps and scars that dot her skin around the wound.

Daisy’s hips jerk off the bed.

He licks and lavishing kisses down on the old would. Kisses it like it’s her lips, like he can taste her on it, kissing and licking and not letting up. Daisy is a moaning, twisting mess beneath him, her hands gripping the sheets, her body flushed in a bright blush from cheeks to navel.

“Victor- Is... Is that all you’re going to do?”

He nips her skin, and she whines.

“Patience.” His words are a low growl. “Gonna make you feel so good. Gonna get you twisting up for me so pretty, gonna make you beg for me so bad.”

She’s struggling to hold back noises.

He can still hear them.

It’s only when all he can smell in the room, blocking out even the deep scent of James and the other x-geeks, all he can smell is her arousal. Then Victor runs his hands down to the waistband of her jeans, and pulls.

His claws shred the material from waist to knees.

Daisy squeals.

Her underwear - simple, black, practical, soaked with the juices of her arousal - are another simple swipe of his claws to remove. He lifts the shreds to his nose, closes his eyes, as he sinks into the warm pleasure of the scent.

Her breath is a hitch in her lungs.

Victor slides back off the bed until he’s on the floor between her legs, his knees on the hardwood and his head between Daisy’s thighs. He kisses on thigh and then the other, giving her skin a brief tease of rough tongue.

Daisy locks her fingers in his hair and pulls him forward with both hands.

There’s still the tattered bits of thread and cloth hanging around her pussy. The first stroke of his tongue goes from the bottom of rough public hair to the top crest of her mound where her hair starts to turn soft. He gives her long, slow stroke, his drool mixing with the salty pre-cum leaking out of her pussy.

Daisy whines and cries out and screams. He nips at her cilt, and feels her shudder and jerk underneath him. He gives another little bite, pushing his fangs on either side of the little bud, and the gasp from her lips is perfect and loud.

“V-Victor.”

She’s still making words, and that’s not right, not right, she needs to be as wordless as he is. She needs to be lost until she forgets there was any threat, any pain.

Victor moved his tongue back to her entrance, thrusts his tongue in between her folds as far deep as he can.

Several seconds later, all ten of Daisy’s fingers clamp down on his skull as she thrusts her hips down onto his face, and it’s the most world shattering trap he’s ever been caught in.

She whimpers when he pulls away.

He smiles, and runs his finger up between her legs, pulling it off when it’s covered in sticky white cum. Daisy watches with blown out pupils as he drags his finger over the nail and around the claw, until his skin is glistening wet and clean once more.

He watches Daisy’s lung stutter once, twice.

She licks her lips, and Victor leans down to chase her tongue with his own, pressing in on her until he feels the desperate need to breath in her lungs, and even then only pulling away enough to give her one gasping breath.

He grins against the kiss as she whines.

Victor kisses her and presses her back until she’s shuffling backwards on the bed and he can kneel on the mattress above her hips.

He gets one hand down his jeans. Daisy tries to grab at him, and Victor growls; just the once is firm enough to have her hands back on top of the sheets again.

He lets his eyes travel over her naked body as his hands strokes faster. She arches her hips up, and her breasts bounce, soft and gold in the half light. Her cheeks are bright and rosy and her hips push wet against his jeans, and now it’s his own stuttering gasps in the air, his own half-strangled growls of pleasure.

Daisy opens her lips, and their eyes meet, and Victor thinks of how brilliant she looks falling apart beneath him, her obientant eyes still filled with that firm fire.

He drags his nails over the head of his cock, and comes in a great spurt over her stomach.

She pulls him down by his neck, and Victor curls around her, and drags his arm over her breasts, and she pulls the sticky sheets away from their bodies. Victor presses his lips to the top of her head as she runs her fingers over the muscles of his chest, underneath his nipples.

He falls asleep to the gentle hum of Daisy’s quiet breathing.


	21. Chapter 21

Five years later...

There are little fingers tangled in his hair. Little fingers that pull at the long strands, that twist around and yank until even he feels like giving into the tears welling up in the corner of his eyes. Two hands, fingers not large enough to cover his scalp even when they stretch out and press all the way down. Like they’re trying to give him a massage. And then little short nails drag down over his scalp too, and that hurts more than the pulling.

Victor keeps his eyes firmly closed and lets the pain be his guide back to the rest of reality.

“Mister Creed! Mister Creed, wake up!”

He opens his eyes to a bright smile, and a young girl’s laughter, and a small weight resting on his chest. Her face is right up close to his, nearly bumping noses, and he knows that he would be able to smell her morning breath even if he didn’t have enhanced senses.

She bounces on her knees, her weight ever moving and shifting on top of him.

“It’s summer, Mister Creed!”

And he remembers why he told himself he was going to get up before she did this morning, why she’s bouncing on his chest like she’s downed three bowls of lucky charms (it’s not even fully daylight outside, and he wouldn’t be all that surprised if she she somehow had managed to consume that much sugar). Buzzed enough that he can almost feel a sympathy headache coming along, and she grins at him, little pointed teeth standing out from her dark purple lips.

“Get up, get up, get up!”

Clarice Ferguson Creed is all of six years old, and flits between too much energy for her body, and overwhelming shyness. When she’s in the mood, and when there’s no one around, her smile can light up the entire room. But for the majority of the time, too much in Victor’s opinion, she walls herself up within her own mind. Retreats to the quiet that had kept her safe before he found her.

When it’s her and him alone though, she is a pure bundle of excitement and joy. He could never begrudge her that.

“Alright, alright, little monkey.”

As he starts to rise, she clambers back off him, dropping onto the bed covers. She giggles when he makes a grab for her with one arm, and rolls away. Tittering on the edge for a moment, before rolling off the bed completely. She louds with a loud thump, and a happy giggle.

Victor shakes his head, and focus on just getting his feet underneath him.

Clarice runs down the hallway ahead of him as he scratches his stomach, yawning slightly. Her bright pink hair is an odd contrast to the neon green nightgown she’s taking to favouring these past few months, the whimsy fancy of a child. He smiles as she reaches the kitchen doorway, and turns around to pout at him with wide, green eyes. Eyes that are almost the same colour of her nightgown, and the same solid colour throughout, no whites to be seen.

Ever since he found her, left for dead in a burning building he should have left long before, Victor had figured that the reason Clarice had been abandoned by her family was her obvious mutant genetics. She had unmistakable markings, thin magenta triangles, that spanned her forehead and upper cheekbones. Her hair, which might have passed for the indulgent fancy of liberal parenting, grew the same colour as a fantasy princess dress. And her eyes, which never showed sadness or joy the way a baseline human’s would, were much less haunting now that she had cheekbones filled in around them, and a bright smile to soften the harsh green.

She bounces on her toes, eager and impatient.

“Hurry up, hurry up!”

Victor gives her hair a little ruffle as he passes her, going straight for the cereal cupboard while Clarice clambers up onto a chair. “You got somewhere you gotta be, that’s got you in all this hurry?”

“Yes Mister Creed!” And she kicks the side of the kitchen island for emphasis. “It’s summer! Did you forget?”

He rolls his eyes where she can’t see him, and then spins around with a thoughtful expression on his face, almost absentmindedly putting a bowl of lucky charms down in front of her. “Forget? Was there something I’m supposed to remember?”

She shakes her spoon at him. “You promised once it was summer, you’d teach me how to swim! It’s the first day of summer, Momma said so!”

Victor laughs, and leans across the island to look Clarice dead in the eyes, and says, in a serious voice, “of course, my little monkey.”

His steady voice and easy smile betray the way his heart is doing flip flops in his chest. Clarice digs into her cereal with wild abandon while Victor contemplates the way that she said Momma so easily. If only Daisy had been awake to hear it-

He feels fingers land on his shoulders, and a soft kiss on his ear, and Victor leans back into the gentle touch of his wife.

“Good morning.” He can hear the smile on her lips, the way they tickle his ear, like a hundred brief kisses. She wraps her arms around his stomach, and presses her weight against his back. “She couldn’t wait, could she?”

“Morning sweetie. No, not today of all days.” Victor covers her hands with his own, feeling her rest her cheek between his shoulder blades. In a lower voice, he asks, “did you what she-”

“Yes.” And Daisy doesn’t seem to have the same breathless wonder in her voice that Victor can feel turning twists inside his head, but she’s warm and content across their bond, and her happiness has the same sort of unexpected thrill that Victor feels in his own. “Congrats on not making it into a big deal.”

“She called you Momma,” he says, no small amount of awe in his words.

Victor spins Daisy around and kisses her. Her lips taste like honey, they’re pliant beneath his mouth, and she holds onto her shoulders as if her grip was the only thing holding her up. He runs his hands through her hair, which is almost past her shoulders again and teasing the edge of what length Daisy can tolerate.

Her pregnant belly is an enforced space between them, but one that makes Victor’s heart swell with happiness and the feral inside him purr with happiness.

Clarice blows a raspberry at them.

“Not in front of little children,” Daisy says, as she breaks off the kiss and steps around Victor. Her hands linger on his shoulder, the heat of her lips against his lingering longer still. “Want me to make breakfast today?”

“I’ll do it.” He’s already turning on the burner. “Any idea when Kyle will be up?”

“Given how worn out he was yesterday, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was up any minute now. Your son got your lack of need for proper sleep.”

And so Victor starts breakfast for his other child as well, while Daisy wanders over into the living room. She braces one hand on her stomach and the other on the back of the couch, just getting seated a struggle at this point in her pregnancy. He can’t actually tell, but Victor thinks from the way she’s carrying, it’ll be another boy. Clarice will be out numbered.

Daisy flicks on the television.

“-breaking news today. Businessman and Friends of Humanity founder Graydon Creed has been declared innocent. Charged with seventeen counts of hate crimes and encouragement, Creed has declared the verdict a victory for humanity.”

Victor’s world comes to a stop.

The pan he’d been about to place on the burner falls from his hand. The air leaves his lungs. He can’t feel his heart pumping anymore, though surely it couldn’t have stopped that easily. His whole vision seems to come down to the one view of the television screen he has, and the red haired man he can see smiling on it.

“Victor?” Daisy asks in a quiet voice, while Clarice stares at him in wide-eyed confusion. “Victor, what’s wrong?”

Victor smells their confusion in the air more than he can smell his own fear, but he knows, he knows, that they will quickly balance out. Maybe not right now, maybe not even in the next short while, But he feels the threat to his family like a thousand pound weight dropped onto his back, and he nearly doubles over from the shock of it.

“Graydon......”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that, dear readers, brings us to the end of Here With You. I do so hope you've enjoyed the read.
> 
> To everyone who has left comments, who has left kudos, who has screamed at me on tumblr about the cruel cliffhangers - thank you. You've made it all worth it.  
> To everyone who trusted me with a WIP fic, who subscribed and bookmarked when it wasn't done, who stuck through the flakey update schedule and the delays - thank you. You had faith in me, and I hope I delivered.  
> To Ozhawk, who created this wonderful world and situation - thank you for letting me play in your sandbox. Thanks for being a marvelous beta :D
> 
> This story took over a year to write, and has dominated my existence for longer than I've been a math student (seriously, I saw the facebook flashback just now. This time last year I'd only just decided to do a math minor, and this fic was at least a month old at that point).  
> There have been many cut scenes from this fic, and moments that were never intended to be written but came to me during plotting and writing anyways. If you wish to see them, please follow the serious Of Love And Monsters to ensure you get those updates.  
> And continue to pester me about plots and behind the scene stuff.
> 
> And yes, there is going to be a sequel ;) Same bat-time, same bat-channel

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr - aliitvodeson


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